morning! MOTHER MOULTON, you MUST be crazy."

"So they tell me," she said, serenely. "There comes Uncle John!" she
added, as the clatter of a staff on the stone steps of the stairway
outrang, for an instant, the cries of hurrying and confusion that filled
the air of the street.

"Don't you know, Mother Moulton," Joe went on to say, "that every single
woman and child have been carried off, where the Britishers won't find
'em?"

"I don't believe the king's troops have stirred out of Boston," she
replied, going to the door leading to the stone staircase, to open it
for Uncle John.

"Don't believe it?" and Joe looked, as he echoed the words, as though
only a boy could feel sufficient disgust at such want of common sense,
in full view of the fact, that Reuben Brown had just brought the news
that eight men had been killed by the king's Red-coats, in Lexington,
which fact he made haste to impart.

"I won't believe a word of it," she said, stoutly, "until I see the
soldiers coming."

"Ah! Hear that!" cried Joe, tossing back his hair and swinging his arms
triumphantly at an airy foe. "You won't have to wait long. THAT
SIGNAL is for the minute men. They are going to march out to meet the
Red-coats. Wish I was a minute man, this minute."

Meanwhile, poor Uncle John was getting down the steps of the stairway,
with many a grimace and groan. As he touched the floor, Joe, his face
beaming with excitement and enthusiasm, sprang to place a chair for 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 rejoined. "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 farther than they could help, I know. Run and tell them mine
are ready, Joe."

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