ed across the river, and the British occupied the town.

In place of the five bridges which to-day, within a mile of the
meeting-house, encircle Concord, the town in 1775 had but two. The first
of these was the South Bridge, on the present Main Street route to
Marlborough and South Acton. The other was the North Bridge, on a
highway now abandoned, which in those days led to Acton, Carlisle, and
Bedford. Colonel Smith took possession of both these bridges, and while
his men searched the town for stores, he sent a detachment across the
North Bridge to the farm of Colonel Barrett, where it was known that
supplies had been kept. Of our two British informants of the events of
the day, Ensign Berniere guided the troops that went to the Barrett
farm, Lieutenant Barker remained with a detachment that stayed to guard
the bridge. Meanwhile, on a hillside beyond the river, almost within
gunshot of the bridge, the militia watched the first detachment pass on
its errand, and counted the numbers of the redcoats that held the nearer
side of the passage.

Colonel Smith speedily learned that his journey had been nearly in vain.
As we have seen, already on the night before, without news from Boston,
the removal of the stores had been begun. The alarm brought in by Dr.
Prescott hastened the work. Men and boys, and even women and girls, were
busy in hiding the stores or carrying them away. Some of them were
skilfully secreted under the very eyes of the British. The troops found
little. In the town some few gun-carriages, barrels of flour, wooden
mess-bowls, and wooden spoons were found and destroyed. At Colonel
Barrett's, acknowledges Berniere, "we did not find so much as we
expected, but what there was we destroyed." He was unaware that the
cannon had been laid in a ploughed field, and concealed by turning a
furrow over them, the work continuing even while the troops were in
sight.

Of proceedings in the town we get the best picture from the petition of
Martha Moulton, "widow-woman," who in her deposition "humbly sheweth:
That on the 19th day of April, 1775, in the forenoon, the town of
Concord, wherein I dwell, was beset with an army of regulars, who, in a
hostile manner, entered the town, and drawed up in form before the house
in which I live; and there they continued on the green, feeding their
horses within five feet of the door; and about fifty or sixty of them
was in and out of the house, calling for water and what they wanted, fo