Who Spoke Next | Page 5

soon learned better, and understood the
purpose of my being more perfectly.
A few days after this, the family was all astir some time before sunrise.
There was a solemn earnestness in their faces, even in the youngest of
them, that was very impressive.
At last, my master took me up, put me in complete order, loaded me
and set me down in the same place, saying as he did so, "Now all is
ready." His wife sighed heavily. He looked at her and said, "My dear,
would you not have us defend our children and firesides against the
oppressors?"
"Yes," she said, "go, but my heart must ache at the thought of what
may happen. If I could only go with you!"

They sat silent for a long time, holding each other's hands, and looking
at their children, till, just at sunrise, his brother John, that sleeping
child's grandfather, rushed into the house, crying, "They are in sight
from the hill. Come, Tom, quickly, come to the church." My master
seized me in a moment, kissed his wife and children, and without
speaking hastened to the place where the few men of the then very
small town were assembled to resist the invaders.
Presently about eight hundred men, all armed with muskets as good as I
was, and of the same fashion, were seen. These men had two cannon
with them which made a fearful show to the poor colonists, as the
Americans were then called.
Our men were about one hundred in number. The lordly English
marched up within a few rods of us, and one called out, "Disperse, you
rebels. Lay down your arms, and disperse."
Our men did not however lay down their arms. My master grasped me
tighter than before. We did not stir an inch. Immediately the British
officers fired their pistols, then a few of their men fired their muskets,
and, at last, the whole party fired upon our little band as we were
retreating. They killed eight men, and then went on to Concord, to do
more mischief there.
I felt a heavy weight fall upon me; it was my master's dead body; and
so I learned what muskets were made for. His fingers were on the
trigger; as he fell, he pulled it, and in that sound his spirit seemed to
depart.
The British marched on to Concord, and the poor brave people of
Lexington, who had so gallantly made the first resistance, were left to
mourn over dead companions and friends.
Soon the eldest son of my master discovered his father among the slain.
The poor fellow! I never shall forget his sorrow. He groaned as if his
heart would break, and then he laid himself down on the ground by the
side of his father's body, and wept bitterly.

One must be made of harder stuff than I am, to forget such a thing as
this. I do not ever like to speak of it, or of the painful scene that
followed. The poor widow and her fatherless children! It seemed a
dreadful work that I and such as I were made to perform.
But there were other things to be thought of then. The British soon
returned from Concord, where they had destroyed some barrels of flour
and killed two or three men.
In the mean time, the men from all the neighboring towns collected
together, armed with all the muskets they could find, and annoyed them
severely on their return by firing on them from behind stone walls.
My master's brother took me from the corner where I had been again
placed, and joined the party. He placed himself behind a fence by
which they must pass, and took such good aim with me that down fell a
man every time I spoke.
Other muskets performed the same work. What they did you may judge
of, when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three
Englishmen fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I
will not talk of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster, but I
did my share of duty, I believe.
About two months after this, uncle John, as the children called him,
came again to borrow me. He was going to join the few brave men who
opposed the British force at Bunker or Breed's Hill.
"Sister," he said, "you will lend me the musket, will you not? I cannot
afford to buy one, and we must teach these English what stuff we are
made of."
"Let me go, Mother," said the eldest boy. "I am old enough now; I am
almost nineteen; let me go."
His mother said nothing; she looked at the vacant chair which was
called his father's; she considered a while, and then took me and put