forthwith mounted his horse and started to carry the warning to every village in Middlesex.[1] The British did not see the beacon fire blazing above them, but marched away silent and still, arresting everybody that came in their way "to prevent the intelligence of their expedition being given."

As the day began to dawn in the east the British reached Lexington, and there they found a company of minute-men gathered on the green. To say that they were amazed at the sight would be putting it very mildly; but Major Pitcairn, after a short consultation with his superior officer, rode up and flourished his sword as if he meant to annihilate the minute-men then and there. His officers followed him and his troops came close behind him in double quick time. But the patriots stood their ground, and the redcoats shouted angrily at them—

"Disperse, you villains! Lay down your arms! Why don't you disperse, you rebels?"

But our men had not come out there to be dispersed by shouting. Utterly ignorant of the ways of civilized warfare they continued to hold their ground, and for a time it looked as though there was going to be bloodshed sure enough. Major Pitcairn did not care to come too close to them but wheeled his horse, discharged his pistol and shouted "Fire!" and the British obeyed him. The front rank fired, and when the smoke cleared away, seven men, the first martyrs of the Revolution, were found weltering in their blood. That was too much for the patriots. They did not suppose that the British were going to shoot them down like dogs. They scattered in every direction, and the redcoats, having nothing further to oppose them, kept on and destroyed the stores.

"Colonel, I don't like the way those rebels retreated," said Major Pitcairn, as he kept a close watch upon the neighboring hills. "They fell back as though they would come again."

"If they were soldiers we would know how to take them," replied Colonel Smith. "But being rebels, we have nothing further to fear from them."

Major Pitcairn, however, kept a bright lookout, and very soon he became uneasy at the rapidity with which the militia increased in numbers. He called the attention of his superior to it, and very shortly the latter gave the order to retreat; and it was not a moment too soon. The whole region flew to arms, for remember that Paul Revere had aroused to vigilance the inmates of every house he came to, and from every one there came a man or boy who was strong enough to handle a rifle, and hurried to the help of his countrymen. It seems that Colonel Smith had more to contend with than mere rebels. It appeared, too, that one who afterwards wrote about that battle was there to have seen it for he tells us in his poem:

The minute-men gathered as if by magic. They did not come out and form themselves in line for the purpose of being shot down by the redcoats, but remembering their skulking habits which they learned while fighting the Indians, they hid behind trees, fences, and rocks, in front, flank, and rear, and poured so galling a fire upon the Britishers that if it had not been for reinforcements not one of those eight hundred men would ever have reached the city alive. As one of their officers expressed it: "the militia seemed to have dropped from the clouds," and the flower of that British army must have surrendered to those patriots if relief had not arrived. Their retreat was regarded as a defeat and a flight, and at every corner were heard the jeers and mockings of the people regarding that "great British army at Boston who had been beaten by a flock of Yankees." At any rate the jubilee trumpet was sounded proclaiming "Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The power of all the royal governors was broken, from Massachusetts to Georgia.

This was the substance of the news which was brought to Machias twenty days after the fight. The people were both astonished and angry—astonished to know that the British soldiers, who had been regarded as invulnerable, could be outdone with American bullets, and angry to learn that so many of their friends[2] should have been killed during their conflict with them.

"This thing has got to be settled now," said Zeke Lewis, turning away and flourishing his fists in the air. "That is too many of our men to go up after fighting those redcoats. Boston has been standing all the brunt of tyranny so far, and we had better join in. Now there's that—"

The man suddenly paused and looked about him. Almost every face he saw was that of a patriot, but there were a few who were known to be Tories, and it would not do to express his thoughts too freely before them.

"Go on, Zeke," said a friend at his elbow. "There's what?"

"When I get you fellows all by yourselves I will explain things to you," said Zeke, after holding a short consultation with a young man who stood close beside him. "There are too many Britishers here."

"Yes; and they ought to be shot down as those redcoats were at Lexington," said another.

Any one who had been there could easily have picked out the Tories by the expression of their faces. They were amazed by the news. British soldiers whipped by a mob! They would have been glad to deny it if they could, but there were too many stalwart sailors standing around whose opinions differed from their own, and they thought it would be the part of wisdom to keep their thoughts to themselves. They turned toward their homes, but they had plenty of opportunity to exchange ideas with one another.

The most of those who had listened to the messenger's news also turned away when he got through speaking and walked with their heads on their breasts and their eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground. Among them was one, Enoch Crosby by name, who seemed to think that the world was coming to an end because the British soldiers had been fired upon; but he did not believe as the Tories did by any means. He was an American; he could not forget that.

Among all the boys of his acquaintance there was no one more loyal to King George than he was. His father had been an officer in the service of the crown before he died, and Enoch believed that a monarch who had been selected to reign over a country, was placed there by divine right. The people had nothing to do with it except to hold themselves in readiness to obey his orders. He had English blood in his veins, and, although he felt the soil of America under his feet, he had been, almost ever since he could remember, a good and loyal subject of Great Britain, and hoped some day to serve King George with his sword. To have all this thing wiped out in a day by a fight, was rather more than the boy could live up under.

But he was an American. It came upon him with a force sometimes that almost took his breath away. He could