Cardigan

"Ay," she said.

"There is a parson below, Silver Heels."

Her face went scarlet.

"Let it be now," I whispered, with my arm around her.

She looked up into my eyes. I leaned over the landing-rail and called out, "Send a man for the parson of Woburn!"

An Acton man stepped out on the tavern porch and shouted for the parson. Presently the good man came, in rusty black, shouldering a fowling-piece, his pockets bulging with a Bible and Book of Common Prayer, his wig all caked and wet from a tour through the dewy willows behind the inn.

"Is there sickness here – or wounds?" he asked, anxiously. Then he saw me above and came wheezing up the stairs.

"Heart-sickness, sir," I said; "we be dying, both of us, for the heart's ease you may bring us through your holy office."

At length he understood – Silver Heels striving to keep her sweet eyes lifted when he spoke to her, and I quiet and determined, asking that he lose no time, for no man knew how long we few here in the tavern had to live. In the same breath I summoned a soldier from the south loophole in the garret, and asked him to witness for me; and he took off his hat and stood sheepishly twirling it, rifle in hand.

And so we were wedded, there in the ancient garret, the pigeons coo-cooing overhead, the blue wasps buzzing up and down the window-glass, and our hands joined before the aged parson of Woburn town. I had the plain gold ring which I had bought in Albany for this purpose, nor dreamed to wed my sweetheart with it thus! – and O the sweetness in her lips and eyes when I drew it from the cord around my neck and placed it on her smooth finger at the word!

Little else I remember, save that the old parson kissed her, and the soldier kissed her outstretched hand, and let his gun fall for bashful fright. Nor that we were truly wedded did I understand, even when the parson of Woburn went away down the creaking stairs with his fowling-piece over his shoulder, leaving us standing mute together under the canopy of swinging herbs. We still held hands, standing quiet, in a vague expectation of some mystery yet to come. Children that we were! – the mystery of mysteries had been wrought, never to be undone till time should end.

A pigeon flew, whimpering, to the beam above us, then strutted and bowed and coo-cooed to its startled, sleek, white sweetheart; a wind blew through the rafters, stirring the dry bunches of catnip, mint, and thyme, till they swung above, scented censers all, exhaling incense.

There was a pile of cotton cloth on the floor; Silver Heels sank down beside it and began to tear it into strips for sewing bandages.

I looked from the window, seeing nothing.

Presently the Minute Man at the south loop spoke:

"A man riding this way – there! – on the Concord Road!"

Silver Heels on the floor worked steadily, ripping the snowy cotton.

"There is smoke yonder on the Concord Road," said the Minute Man.

I roused and rubbed my eyes.

"Do you hear firing," he asked, "far away in the west?"

"Yes."

"Concord lies northwest."

Silver Heels, absorbed in her task, hummed a little tune under her breath.

"The smoke follows the road," said the Minute Man.

The firing became audible in the room. Silver Heels raised her head with a grave glance at me. I went and knelt beside her.

"It is coming at last, little sweetheart," I said. "Will you go, now? Foxcroft will take you across the fields to some safe farm."

"You know Sir William would not have endured to see me leave at such a time," she said.

"Yes, dear heart, but you cannot carry a rifle."

"But I can make bullets and bandages."

"The British fire at women; you must go!" I said, aloud.

"I will not go."

"I command."

"No." She bent her fair, childish head and the tears fell on the cloth in her lap.

"Look! Look at the redcoats!" called out the Minute Man at the attic window.

As I rose I heard plainly the long, resounding crash of musket firing, and the rattle of rifles followed like a hundred echoes.

"Look yonder!" he cried.

Suddenly the Concord Road was choked with scarlet-clad soldiers. Mapped out below us the country stretched, and over it, like a blood-red monster worm, wound the British column – nay, like to a dragon it came on, with flanking lines thrust out east and west for its thin red wings, and head and tail wreathed with smoke.

And now we could see feathery puffs of smoke from the road-side bushes, from distant hills, from thickets, from ploughed fields, from the long, undulating stone walls which crossed the plain. Faster and faster came the musket volleys, but faster yet rang out the shots from our yeomanry, gathering thicker and thicker along the British route, swarming in from distant towns and hamlets and lonely farms.

The old tavern was ringing with voices now – commands of officers, calls from those who were posted above, clattering steps on the porch as the Acton men ran out to their posts behind the tufted willows in the swamp.

He who had been placed in charge at the tavern, a young officer of the Woburn Alarm Men, shouted for silence and attention, and ordered us not to fire unless fired upon, as our position would be hopeless if cannon were brought against us. Then he commanded all women to leave the tavern and seek shelter at Slocum's farm across the meadows.

"No, no!" murmured Silver Heels, obstinately, as I took her hand and started for the stairs, "I will not go, – I cannot – I cannot! Let me stay, Michael; for God's sake, let me stay!" And she fell on her knees and caught at my hands.

"To your posts!" roared the Woburn officer, drawing his sword and coming up the stairs two at a jump. He stopped short when he saw Silver Heels, and glanced blankly at me; but there was no time now for flight, for, as he stepped to the window beside me, pell-mell into the village green rushed the British light infantry, dusty, exhausted, enraged. In brutal disorder they surged on, here a squad huddled together, there a company, bullied, threatened, and harangued by its officers with pistols and drawn swords; now a group staggering past, bearing dead or wounded comrades, now a heavy cart loaded with knapsacks and muskets, driven by hatless soldiers.

Close on their heels tramped the grenadiers. Soldier after soldier staggered and fell from the ranks, utterly exhausted, unable to rise from the grass.

The lull in the firing was broken by a loud discharge of musketry from Fiske's Hill, and presently more redcoats came rushing into the village, while at their very heels the Bedford Alarm Men shot at them, and chased them. Everywhere our militia came swarming – from Sudbury, Westford, Lincoln, Acton; Minute Men from Medford, from Stowe, from Beverly, and from Lynn – and their ancient firelocks blazed from every stone wall, and their long rifles banged from the distant ridges.

Below me in the street I saw the British officers striving desperately to reform their men, kicking the exhausted creatures to their feet again, striking laggards, shoving the bewildered and tired grenadiers into line, while thicker and thicker pelted the bullets from the Minute Men and militia.

They were brave men, these British officers; I saw a young ensign of the Tenth Foot fall with a ball through his stomach, yet rise and face the storm until shot to death by a dozen Alarm Men on the Bedford Road.

It was dreadful; it was doubly dreadful when a company of grenadiers suddenly faced about and poured a volley into our tavern, for, ere the crashing and splintered wood had ceased, the tavern fairly vomited flame into the square, and the British went down in heaps. Through the smoke I saw an officer struggling to disengage himself from his fallen and dying horse; I saw the massed infantry reel off through the village, firing frenziedly right and left, pouring volleys into farm-houses, where women ran screaming out into the barns, and frantic watch-dogs barked, tugging at their chains.

It was not a retreat, not a flight; it was a riot, a horrible saturnalia of smoke and fire and awful sound. As a maddened panther, wounded, rushes forth to deal death right and left, even tearing its own flesh with tooth and claw, the British column burst south across the land, crazed with wounds, famished, athirst, blood-mad, dealing death and ruin to all that lay before it.

Terrible was the vengeance that followed it, hovered on its gasping flanks, scourged its dwindling ranks, which withered under the searching fire from every tuft of bushes, every rock, every tree-trunk.

Already the ghastly pageant had rushed past us, leaving a crimson trail in its wake; already the old tavern door was flung wide, and our Minute Men were running down the Boston Road and along the ridges on either side, firing as they came on.