take, or will you move into Boston and stop with your relations there
until the struggle has ended one way or the other?"

As Mrs. Wilson had frequently talked over with her husband the course
that he would take in the event of civil war actually breaking out,
the news that he would at once offer his services to the British
authorities did not come as a shock upon her. Even the question of
Harold accompanying his father had been talked over; and although her
heart bled at the thought of husband and son being both engaged in
such a struggle, she agreed to acquiesce in any decision that Harold
might arrive at. He was now nearly sixteen, and in the colonies a lad
of this age is, in point of independence and self-reliance, older
than an English boy. Harold, too, had already shown that he possessed
discretion and coolness as well as courage, and although now that the
moment had come Mrs. Wilson wept passionately at the thought of their
leaving her, she abstained from saying any word to dissuade them from
the course they had determined upon. When she recovered from her fit
of crying she said that she would accompany them at once to Boston,
as in the first place their duties might for some time lie in that
city, and that in any case she would obtain far more speedy news
there of what was going on throughout the country than she would at
Concord. She would, too, be living among her friends and would meet
with many of the same convictions and opinions as her husband's,
whereas in Concord the whole population would be hostile.

Captain Wilson said that there was no time to be lost, as the whole
town was in a tumult. He therefore advised her to pack up such
necessary articles as could be carried in the valises, on the horses'
backs.