s."

"Now you are talking foolishly," Hardy cried, angrily. "If I didn't
know you two fellows as well as I do, I'd say you were ready to make
friends with the oppressors."

"We have no desire to be friendly with the soldiers," Amos replied,
thoughtfully, "nor can I understand why we should announce ourselves
as their enemies. They have done nothing to us personally; but are
simply stationed here in obedience to the King's commands."

"Oh, they have done nothing to us, eh?" the barber's apprentice cried,
as if in a fury. "You stand here and say that, after what has happened
this afternoon?"

"Well, what _has_ happened?" and Jim caught the excited barber by the
coat collar, shaking him vigorously, as if he believed by such
energetic measures he might be restored to his scanty senses.

"Come down under the Liberty Tree and you'll find out all about it. I
tell you that this sort of thing can't go on much longer. We'll rise
in our might, as Attucks says; that's what we'll do, and I'll help in
the rising!"

"Instead of continuing such ridiculous threats as you have been making
since the funeral, suppose you tell us what happened this afternoon to
put you in such a state of excitement. Has some other Britisher
refused to pay your master's bill?"

"This is a matter which the people of Boston must take up, and that's
exactly what they will do?" Hardy cried, stammering in his eagerness
to relate the exciting news. "This forenoon one of the 'bloody backs'
was down by your father's ropewalk,[D] and got into a little trouble
with one of the workmen. Nothing would do but that they must fight it
out, and the redcoat got a beating."

"Well?" Amos asked, placidly, as Hardy paused for breath.

"Well, and what does the Britisher do, but walk straight up to
Murray's Barracks,[E] get a crowd of his chums, and go back to Gray's
place, where they pounded five or six of the rope-makers almost to
death. While you fellows have been sitting here idle, people who have
more love for their country are gathering under the Liberty Tree, and
if you go there now you'll hear what is to be done."

Jim looked at Amos as if to ask whether he believed all the barber's
apprentice had told them, and the latter replied by an incredulous
shake of the head, as he said:

"We'll go down to Liberty Hall; but I don't think the inhabitants of
Boston are nearly as much excited as Hardy believes. He and that
mulatto friend of his, I reckon, are the only on