; then running up the stairs to tell the scraps of news that he
had gleaned through open door, or crack, or key-hole.

The day wore on; outside a great and greater crowd surged every moment
against the walls; but the walls of the State House were thick, and
the crowd was hushed to silence, with intense longing to hear what was
going on inside.

From his high-up place in the belfry, where he had been on watch,
Bellman Grey espied a figure on horseback, hurrying toward the scene;
the horse was white with heat and hurry; the rider's "face was no
bigger than an apple," but it was a face of importance that day.

"Run!" shouted Bellman Grey from the belfry. "Run and tell them that
Mr. Rodney comes."

The boy descended the staircase with a bound and a leap and a thump
against the door, and announced Caesar Rodney's approach.

In he came, weary with his eighty miles in the saddle, through heat
and hunger and dust, for Delaware had sent her son in haste to the
scene.

The door closed behind him and all was as still and solemn as before.

Up in the belfry the old man stroked fondly the tongue of the bell,
and softly said under his breath again and again as the hours went:
"They will never do it; they will never do it."

The boy sat on the lowest step of the staircase, alternately peeping
through the key-hole with eye to see and with ear to hear. At last,
came a stir within the room. He peeped again. He saw Mr. Hancock, with
white and solemn face, bend over the paper on the table, stretch forth
his hand, and dip the pen in the ink. He watched that hand and arm
curve the pen to and fro over the paper, and then he was away up the
stairs like a cat.

Breathless with haste, he cried up the belfry: "_He's a doing it, he
is!_ I saw him through the key-hole. Mr. Hancock has put his name to
that big paper on the table."

"Go back! go back! you young fool, and keep watch, and tell me quick
when to ring!" cried down the voice of Bellman Grey, as he wiped for
the hundredth time the damp heat from his forehead and the dust from
the iron tongue beside him.

Blue-Eyed Boy went back and peeped again just in time to see Mr.
Samuel Adams in the chair, pen in hand.

One by one, in "solemn silence all," the members wrote their names,
each one knowing full well, that unless the Colonists could fight
longer and stronger than Great Britain, that signature would prove his
own death-warrant.

It was fitting that the men who wrote their n