valley. Such is the woful change wrought in every household, as the
successive reports of the heavily-charged pieces sound through the
village, and penetrate to the farthest outlying farmhouse. The first
shot may well be an accident, the second may possibly be, but as the
third inexorably follows, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters,
parents and sons, look at each other with blanched faces, and instantly
a hundred scenes of quiet preparation for meeting, are transformed into
the confusion of a very different kind of preparation. Catechisms are
dropped for muskets, and Bibles fall unnoticed under foot, as men
spring for their haversacks and powder-horns. For those three guns
summon the minute men to be on the march for Bennington. All the
afternoon before, the roar of cannon has faintly sounded from the
northward, and the people knew that Stark was meeting Baum and his
Hessians, on the Hoosac. One detachment of Stockbridge men is already
with him. Does this new summons mean disaster? Has the dreaded foe made
good his boasted invincibility? No one knows, not even the exhausted
messenger, for he was sent off by Stark, while yet the issue of
yesterday's battle trembled in the balance.

"It's kinder suddin. I wuz in hopes the boys wouldn' hev to go, bein
as they wuz a fightin yisdy," quavered old Elnathan Hamlin, as he
trotted about, helplessly trying to help, and only hindering Mrs.
Hamlin, as with white face, but deft hands, and quick eyes, she was
getting her two boys ready, filling their haversacks, sewing a button
here, tightening a buckle there, and looking to everything.

"Ye must tak keer o' Reub, Perez. He ain't so rugged 'zye be. By
rights, he orter ha stayed to hum."

"Oh, I'm as stout as Perez. I can wrastle him. Don't fret about me,"