she answered.

“Has he got money?” cried Joe. “I thought 16 he was poor, and you took care of him because you were so good!”

Not one word that Joe uttered did the little woman hear. She was already by Uncle John’s side and asking him for the key to his strong box.

Uncle John’s rheumatism was terribly exasperating. “No, I won’t give it to you!” he cried, “and nobody shall have it as long as I am above ground.”

“Then the soldiers will carry it off,” she said.

“Let ’em!” was his reply, grasping his staff firmly with both hands and gleaming defiance out of his wide, pale eyes. “You won’t get the key, even if they do.”

At this instant, a voice at the doorway shouted the words, “Hide, hide away somewhere, Mother Moulton, for the Red Coats are in sight this minute!”

She heard the warning, and giving one glance at Uncle John, which look was answered by another “No, you won’t have it,” she grasped Joe Devins by the collar of his jacket and thrust him before her up the staircase so quickly that the boy had no chance to speak, until she released her hold, on the second floor, at the entrance to Uncle John’s room.

The idea of being taken a prisoner in such a manner, and by a woman, too, was too much for the lad’s endurance. “Let me go!” he cried, the instant he could recover his breath. “I won’t hide away in your garret, like a woman, I won’t. 17 I want to see the militia and the minute men fight the troops, I do.”

“Help me first, Joe. Here, quick now! Let’s get this box out and up garret. We’ll hide it under the corn and it’ll be safe,” she coaxed.

The box was under Uncle John’s bed.

“What’s in the old thing anyhow?” questioned Joe, pulling with all his strength at it.

The box, or chest, was painted red, and was bound about by massive iron bands.

“I’ve never seen the inside of it,” said Mother Moulton. “It holds the poor old soul’s sole treasure, and I do want to save it for him if I can.”

They had drawn it with much hard endeavor as far as the garret stairs, but their united strength failed to lift it. “Heave it, now!” cried Joe, and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a thudding thump;—every one of which thumps Uncle John heard and believed to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder—until it was fairly shelved on the garret floor.

In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been heard crying out, “Let my box alone! Don’t you break it open! If you do, I’ll—I’ll—” but, whatever the poor man meant to threaten as a penalty, he could not think of anything half severe enough to say, so left it uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.

“Poor old soul!” ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she 18 bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter’s edge.

“Now, Joe,” she said, “we’ll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers want corn they’ll take good ears and never think of touching poor nubbins.” So they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until it was completely concealed from view.

Then Joe sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and took one glance out. “Oh, I see them, the Red Coats! ’Strue’s I live, there go our militia up the hill. I thought they was going to stand and defend. Shame on ’em, I say!” Jumping down and crying back to Mother Moulton, “I’m going to stand by the minute men,” he went down, three steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who, with many groans, was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.

“What did you help her for, you scamp?” he demanded of Joe, flourishing his staff unpleasantly near the lad’s head.

“’Cause she asked me to, and couldn’t do it alone,” returned Joe, dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene at the very moment Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.

“Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay,” she added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.

Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare, and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil and the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and homespun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation to any discerning soldier of the king.

A smile broke suddenly over her fair face, displacing for a brief second every trace of care. “It’s my old weapon, and I must use it,” she said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest, and straightway disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.

As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the breakfast she had not eaten, 20 the clear pink tints seemed to come out with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks, while her hair seemed fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven years.

Once more, Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture she made, he paused to cry out: “All dressed up to meet the robbers! My, how fine you do look! I wouldn’t. I’d go and hide behind the nubbins. They’ll be here in less than five minutes now,” he cried, “and I’m going over the North Bridge to see what’s going on there.”

“O Joe, stay, won’t you?” she urged, but the lad was gone, and she was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought, “They’ll treat me with more respect if I look respectable, and if I must die, I’ll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow.”

She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers and then drew out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying. Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John’s “prayer book.”

“They’ll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know,” she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well, and where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and waited for coming events.

Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper window. “Martha,” he 21 called, “you’d better come up. They’re close by, now.” To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was a little afraid; that is to say, he hadn’t quite courage enough to 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