"What did you help her for, you scamp," he demanded of Joe, flourishing
his staff unpleasantly near the lad's head.

"'Cause she asked me to, and couldn't do it alone," returned Joe,
dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene, at the very moment
Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.

"Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house
burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay," she
added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.

Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her
next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare,
and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the
hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil, and
the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and
home-spun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation, to
any discerning soldier of the king.

A smile broke suddenly over her face, displacing for a brief second
every trace of care. "It's my only weapon, and I must use it," she
said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest and straightway
disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped
curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest
raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture
pleasant to look at. In all New England, 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 go