ngland, there could not be a
more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her
hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy
little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a
little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a
particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of
a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as
spotless as the cap.

As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the
breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come out
with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks, while her hair seemed
fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven
years.

Once more, Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture
she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet the robbers!
My, how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and hide behind the
nubbins. They'll be here in less than five minutes now," he cried,
"and I'm going over the North Bridge to see what's going on there."

"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and she was
left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought,
"They'll treat me with more respect if I _look_ respectable, and if I
_must_ die, I'll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow."

She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers and then drew out
the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying.
Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church
of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John's "prayer book."

"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know,"
she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well,
and where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and
waited for coming events.

Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper
window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up. They're close by,
now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was a little afraid; that
is to say, he hadn't quite courage enough to go down and, perhaps,
encounter his own rheumatism and the king's soldiers on the same
stairway, and yet, he felt that he must defend Martha as well as he
could.

The rap of a musket, quick and ringing, on the front door, startled
the little woman from her apparent devotions. She did not move at the
call of anything so profane. It was the custom of