claim the privilege of building a memorial.

A humbler token of the fight, yet a more interesting one than the
granite obelisk, may be seen close under the stone wall which
separates the battle-ground from the precincts of the parsonage. It is
the grave,--marked by a small, mossgrown fragment of stone at the head
and another at the foot,--the grave of two British soldiers who were
slain in the skirmish, and have ever since slept peacefully where
Zechariah Brown and Thomas Davis buried them. Soon was their warfare
ended; a weary night-march from Boston, a rattling volley of musketry
across the river, and then these many years of rest. In the long
procession of slain invaders who passed into eternity from the battle-
fields of the Revolution, these two nameless soldiers led the way.

Lowell, the poet, as we were once standing over this grave, told me a
tradition in reference to one of the inhabitants below. The story has
something deeply impressive, though its circumstances cannot
altogether be reconciled with probability. A youth in the service of
the clergyman happened to be chopping wood, that April morning, at the
back door of the Manse; and when the noise of battle rang from side to
side of the bridge, he hastened across the intervening field to see
what might be going forward. It is rather strange, by the way, that
this lad should have been so diligently at work when the whole
population of town and country were startled out of their customary
business by the advance of the British troops. Be that as it might,
the tradition, says that the lad now left his task and hurried to the
battle-field with the axe still in his hand. The British had by this
time retreated; the Americans were in pursuit; and the late scene of
strife was thus deserted by both parties. Two soldiers lay on the
ground,--one was a corpse; but, as the young New-Englander drew nigh,