go down, and, perhaps, encounter his own rheumatism and the
king's soldiers on the same stairway, and yet, he felt that he
must defend Martha as well as he could.

The rap of a musket, quick and ringing on the front door,
startled the little woman from her apparent devotions. She did
not move at the call of anything so profane. It was the custom
of the time to have the front door divided into two parts, the
lower half and the upper half. The former was closed and made
fast, the upper could be swung open at will.

The soldier getting no reply, and doubtless thinking that the
house was deserted, leaped over the chained lower half of the
door.

At the clang of his bayonet against the brass trimmings, Martha
Moulton groaned in spirit, for, if there was any one thing that
she deemed essential to her comfort in this life, it was to keep
spotless, speckless and in every way unharmed, the great knocker
on her front door.

"Good, sound English metal, too," she thought, "that an English
soldier ought to know how to respect."

As she heard the tramp of coming feet she only bent the closer
over the Book of Prayer that lay open on her knee. Not one word
did she read or see; she was inwardly trembling and outwardly
watching the well and the staircase. But now, above all other
sounds, broke the noise of Uncle John's staff thrashing the upper
step of the staircase, and the shrill tremulous cry of the old