ock ticking
soberly, the old Pensioner smoking his pipe in the arm-chair, Paul's
mother knitting,--Bruno by Paul's side, wagging his tail and watching
Muff in the opposite corner rolling her great round yellow eyes. Bruno
was always ready to give Muff battle whenever Paul tipped him the wink
to pitch in.

The Pensioner's stories were of his boyhood,--how he joined the army,
and fought the battles of the Revolution. Thus his story ran.

"I was only a little bigger than you are, Paul," he said, "when the
red-coats began the war at Lexington. I lived in old Connecticut then;
that was a long time before we came out here. The meeting-house bell
rung, and the people blew their dinner-horns, and ran up to the
meeting-house and found the militia forming. The men had their guns and
powder-horns. The women were at work melting their pewter porringers
into bullets. I wasn't old enough to train, but I could fire a gun and
bring down a squirrel from the top of a tree. I wanted to go and help
drive the red-coats into the ocean. I asked mother if I might. I was
afraid that she didn't want me to go. 'Why, Paul,' says she, 'you
haven't any clothes.' 'Mother,' says I, 'I can shoot a red-coat just as
well as any of the men can.' Says she, 'Do you want to go, Paul?' 'Yes,
mother!' 'You shall go; I'll fix you out.' As I hadn't any coat she took
a meal-bag, cut a hole for my head in the bottom, and made holes for my
arms, cut off a pair of her own stocking-legs, and sewed them on for
sleeves, and I was rigged. I took the old gun which father carried at
Ticonderoga, and the powder-horn, and started. There is the gun and the
horn, Paul, hanging up.

"The red-coats had got back to Boston, but we cooped them up. Our
company was in Colonel Knowlton's regiment. I carried the flag, which
said, _Qui transtulit sustinet_. I don't know anything about Latin, but
those who do say it means that God who hath transported us will sustain
us, and that is true, Paul. He sustained us at Bunker Hill, and we
should have held it if our powder had not given out. Our regiment was by
a rail-fence on the northeast side of the hill. Stark, with his New
Hampshire boys, was by the river. Prescott was in the redoubt on the top
of the hill. Old Put kept walking up and down the lines. This is the way
it was, Paul."

The Pensioner laid aside his pipe, bent forward, and traced upon the
hearth the positions of the troops.

"There is the redoubt; here is the rail-fence;