aid, "The British troops have marched, but will miss their aim!"

"What aim?" inquired Lord Percy.

"Why, the cannon at Concord." He hastened back to General Gage with this
information, when orders were immediately issued that no person should
leave town. Dr. Warren, however, a few minutes previous, had sent Paul
Revere and William Dawes into the country. Revere, about eleven o'clock,
rowed across the river to Charlestown, was supplied by Richard Devens
with a horse, and started to alarm the country. Just outside of
Charlestown Neck he barely escaped capture by British officers; but
leaving one of them in a clay-pit, he got to Medford, awoke the captain
of the minute-men, gave the alarm on the road, and reached the Rev.
Jonas Clark's house in safety, where the evening before a guard of
eight men had been stationed to protect Hancock and Adams.

It was midnight as Revere rode up and requested admittance. William
Monroe, the sergeant, told him that the family, before retiring to rest,
had requested that they might not be disturbed by noise about the house.
"Noise!" replied Revere; "you'll have noise enough before long--the
regulars are coming out!" He was then admitted. Dawes, who went out
through Roxbury, soon joined him. Their intelligence was "that a large
body of the King's troops, supposed to be a brigade of twelve or fifteen
hundred, had embarked in boats from Boston, and gone over to Lechmere's
Point, in Cambridge, and it was suspected they were ordered to seize and
destroy the stores belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord."

The town of Lexington, Major Phinney writes, is "about twelve miles
northwest of Boston and six miles southeast of Concord. It was
originally a part of Cambridge, and previous to its separation from that
town was called the Cambridge Farms." The act of incorporation bears
date March 20, 1712. The inhabitants consist principally of hardy and
independent yeomanry. In 1775 the list of enrolled militia bore the
names of over one hundred citizens. The road leading from Boston divides
near the centre of the village in Lexington. The part leading to Concord
passes to the left, and that leading to Bedford to the right, of the
meeting-house, and form two sides of a triangular green or common, on
the south corner of which stands the meeting-house, facing directly down
the road leading to Boston. At the right of the meeting-house, on the
opposite side of Bedford road, was Buckman's Tavern.