him at the table, saying, "Good morning," at the same moment.

"May be," groaned Uncle John, "youngsters _like you may_ think it is a
good morning, but _I don't_. Such a din and clatter as the fools have
kept up all night long. If I had the power" (and now the poor old man
fairly groaned with rage), "I'd make 'em quiet long enough to let an
old man get a wink of sleep, when the rheumatism lets go."

"I'm real sorry for you," said Joe, "but you don't know the news. The
king's troops, from camp, in Boston, are marching right down here, to
carry off all our arms that they can find."

"Are they?" was the sarcastic rejoinder. "It's the best news I've
heard in a long while. Wish they had my arms, this minute. They
wouldn't carry them a step further than they could help, I know. Run
and tell them that mine are ready, Joe."

"But, Uncle John, wait until after breakfast, you'll want to use them
once more," said Martha Moulton, trying to help him into a chair that
Joe had placed on the white sanded floor.

Meanwhile, Joe Devins had ears for all the sounds that penetrated the
kitchen from out of doors, and he had eyes for the slices of
well-browned pork and the golden-hued Johnny-cake lying before the
glowing coals on the broad hearth.

As the little woman bent to take up the breakfast, Joe, intent on
doing some kindness for her in the way of saving treasures, asked,
"Sha'n't I help you, Mother Moulton?"

"I reckon I am not so old that I can't lift a mite of corn-bread," she
replied with chilling severity.

"Oh, I didn't mean to lift _that thing_," he made haste to explain,
"but to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been
doing half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used
to be a honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything.
Silver spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's
words were interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off
to learn the news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had
been offered to him.

Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes
ablaze with excitement. "They're coming!" he cried. "They're in sight
down by the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill do!"

"You don't mean that it's really true that the soldiers are coming
here, _right into our town_!" cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste
and bringing together, with rapid flourishes to right and to left,
every fragment of