never shall forget his sorrow. He groaned as if his
heart would break, and then he laid himself down on the ground by the
side of his father's body, and wept bitterly.

One must be made of harder stuff than I am, to forget such a thing as
this. I do not ever like to speak of it, or of the painful scene that
followed. The poor widow and her fatherless children! It seemed a
dreadful work that I and such as I were made to perform.

But there were other things to be thought of then. The British soon
returned from Concord, where they had destroyed some barrels of flour
and killed two or three men.

In the mean time, the men from all the neighboring towns collected
together, armed with all the muskets they could find, and annoyed them
severely on their return by firing on them from behind stone walls.

My master's brother took me from the corner where I had been again
placed, and joined the party. He placed himself behind a fence by which
they must pass, and took such good aim with me that down fell a man
every time I spoke.

Other muskets performed the same work. What they did you may judge of,
when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three Englishmen
fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I will not talk
of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster, but I did my share
of duty, I believe.

About two months after this, uncle John, as the children called him,
came again to borrow me. He was going to join the few brave men who
opposed the British force at Bunker or Breed's Hill.

"Sister," he said, "you will lend me the musket, will you not? I cannot
afford to buy one, and we must teach these English what stuff we are
made of."

"Let me go, Mother," said the eldest boy. "I am old enough now; I am
almost nineteen; let me go."

His mother said nothing; she looked at the vacant chair which was
called his father's; she considered a while, and then took me and put
me into her son's hands.

"God bless you, William," she said, "and bring you back safe to us; but
do your duty and fear nothing."

She kissed him, and he left her. I felt William's heart beat bravely as
he shouldered me. He was a fine fellow. We were as one. I was proud of
him, and he of me. No man and musket did better than William and I, on
that never-to-be-forgotten day; but, in the midst of the battle, a shot
wounded William's right arm, and he let me fall.

His uncle led him off the field and sent him home to his moth