of generals and marquises and grave dignitaries upon whom depended the
destiny of the States--officers in gold lace and scarlet cloth, and
high-heeled belles in patch, powder, and paduasoy. At this door the
Flying Stage Coach, which crept from Boston, once a week set down its
load of passengers--and distinguished passengers they often were. Most
of the chief celebrities of the land, before and after the secession of
the colonies, were the guests of Master Stavers, at the sign of the Earl
of Halifax.

While the storm was brewing between the colonies and the mother country,
it was in a back room of the tavern that the adherents of the crown met
to discuss matters. The landlord himself was a amateur loyalist,
and when the full cloud was on the eve of breaking he had an early
intimation of the coming tornado. The Sons of Liberty had long watched
with sullen eyes the secret sessions of the Tories in Master Stavers's
tavern, and one morning the patriots quietly began cutting down the post
which supported the obnoxious emblem. Mr. Stavers, who seems not to have
been belligerent himself, but the cause of belligerence in others, sent
out his black slave with orders to stop proceedings. The negro, who was
armed with an axe, struck but a single blow and disappeared. This blow
fell upon the head of Mark Noble; it did not kill him, but left him an
insane man till the day of his death, forty years afterward. A furious
mob at once collected, and made an attack on the tavern, bursting in
the doors and shattering every pane of glass in the windows. It was only
through the intervention of Captain John Langdon, a warm and popular
patriot, that the hotel was saved from destruction.

In the mean while Master Stavers had escaped through the stables in
the rear. He fled to Stratham, where he was given refuge by his friend
William Pottle, a most appropriately named gentleman, who had supplied