end,--all were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;--an array that
might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt,
but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood,
resolve and desperate courage.

Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the "ole
queen's arm" to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and
brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction
that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in
the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts,
trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it,
till Aunt Poll began to imagine she heard the distant strokes of a
battering-ram, and rushing out in terror to assure herself, discovered it
to be only Sam Pequot, an old Indian, who, with the apathy of his race, was
threshing in the barn.

Aunt Poll took down Josephus to refresh her memory, and actually drew a
laugh from Sally's grave lips by confiding to her this extreme horror of
the case; a laugh she forgave, since Sally reassured her by recommending to
her notice the fact that Jerusalem had stone walls that were more difficult
to climb than stone fences. As for Sally, she thought of George, all day of
George, all night; and while the next day deepened toward noon, was still
thinking of him, when in rushed Long Snapps, tarpaulin in hand, full of
news and horror.

"I swan! we've got it now!" said he. "Them darned Britishers sot out fur
Concord last night, to board our decks an' plunder the magazine; the
boys heerd on't, and they was ready over to Lexin'ton, waitin' round the
meetin'us; they stood to't, an' that old powder monkey Pitcairn sung out to
throw down their arms, darned rebels; an' cause they didn't muster to his