the town meetings, waited for more soldiers. He summoned the
remnant of his council to meet in Salem; but the members were afraid to
come, and, departing from his orders, he allowed them to sit in Boston.

And now, as the weeks passed on, even Boston was rumbling with the
thunder of the coming storm. Israel Putnam, having driven to Boston a
flock of sheep, the gift to the poor of Boston from his Connecticut
town, became the lion of the day. Meeting on the Common some of his old
friends in the regular army, they chaffed him on the military situation.
Twenty ships and twenty regiments, they told him, were to be expected if
the country did not submit. "If they come," returned the stanch old
Indian fighter, "I am ready to treat them as enemies."

At length the forms of law failed even in Boston. When the judges
summoned a jury, it not only refused to take oath, but presented a
written protest against the authority on which the court acted. The
judges gave up the attempt in despair, and the governor and his advisers
thought that matters were come to a pretty pass when a mere petit juror
could declare "that his conscience would not let him take oath whiles
Peter Oliver set upon the bench."[45] There was apparently no punishment
to meet such obduracy.

But at last news came to Gage on which he felt compelled to act. Much
powder had been stored in the magazine at Quarry Hill in Charlestown. He
was informed that during August the towns had removed their stock, until
there remained only that which belonged to the province. This stock Gage
determined to secure against possible illegal seizure, by seizing it
himself. On the morning of the first of September, by early daylight,
detachments of troops in boats took the powder to the Castle, and also
secured two cannon from Cambridge. Rumors of violence and bloodshed
spread rapidly, and by nightfall half of New England was in motion,
marching toward Boston.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Sabine's "Loyalists," 190.

[36] Andrews Letters.

[37] The Andrews Letters, as already noted, are in the Massachusetts
Historical Society's Proceedings for the volume of 1864-1865. I shall
refer to them frequently without quoting pages.

[38] Wells, "Life of Adams," ii, 193.

[39] Wells, "Adams," ii, 193.

[40] Bancroft, edition of 1876, iv, 344. Subsequent references to
Bancroft will be to this edition.

[41] Sic!

[42] Note the use of the word, as meaning England.

[43] I take these facts from