full of soldiers, encamped on the common and
quartered elsewhere; but also, as he had not expected, that the troops
were virtually confined to the town, which was fortified at the Neck;
that the last time they had marched into the country, through
Lexington to Concord, they had marched back again at a much faster
gait, and left many score dead and wounded on the way; and that a host
of New Englanders in arms were surrounding Boston! The news of April
19th had not reached Europe until after Harry had sailed, nor had it
met his regiment on the ocean. When he heard it now, he could only
become more grave and uneasy. But the British officers were scornful
of their clodhopper besiegers. In due time this rabble should be
scattered like chaff. But was it a mere rabble? Certainly. Were not
the best people in Boston loyal to the King's government? Some of
them, yes. But, as Harry went around with open eyes and ears, eager
for information, he found that many of them were with the "rabble."
News was easy to be had. The citizens were allowed to pass the barrier
on the Neck, if they did not carry arms or ammunition, and there was
no strict discipline in the camp of New Englanders. Therefore Harry
soon learned how Doctor Warren stood, and the Adamses, and Mr. John
Hancock; and that a Congress, representing all the Colonies, was now
sitting at Philadelphia, for the second time; and that in the Congress
his own Virginia was served by such gentlemen as Mr. Richard Henry
Lee, Mr. Patrick Henry, Mr. Thomas Jefferson, and Colonel Washington.
And the Virginians had shown as ready and firm a mind for revolt
against the King's measures as the New Englanders had. Here, for once,
the sympathies of trading Puritan and fox-hunting Virginian were one.
Moreover, a Yankee was a fellow American, and, after five years of
contact with English self-esteem, Harry warmed at the sight of a New
Englander as he never would have done before he had left Virginia.

But it did not conduce to peace of mind, in his case, to be convinced
that the colonial remonstrance was neither local nor of the rabble.
The more general and respectable it was, the more embarrassing was his
own situation. Would it really come to war? With ill-concealed
anxiety, he sought the opinion of this person and that.

On the fourth day after his arrival, he went into a tavern in King
Street with Lieutenant Massay, of the Thirty-fifth, Ensign Charleton,
of the Fifth, and another young office