journed till Tuesday
morning to hear what the consignees would do.

Through the night Abraham Duncan and the other watchmen patrolled the
wharves. The Dartmouth had sailed up the harbor and was riding at
anchor.

A great crowd filled the meetinghouse at nine o'clock Tuesday. The
moderator read a letter from Richard Clark and the other consignees,
who said they could not send the tea back, but would put it in their
stores till they could hear from the East India Company.

"No! no! no!" shouted the people, who were more than ever determined
that it should not be landed.

Tom saw the sheriff, with his sword by his side, as the emblem of
authority, enter the meetinghouse, with a paper in his hand.

"It is from his excellency, the governor," said the sheriff, bowing to
the moderator.

"We don't want to hear it," shouted the people.

"We are assembled in orderly town meeting. I think we had better hear
what the governor has to communicate," said Samuel Adams, and the
great audience became silent. Tom's blood began to boil as the sheriff
read:--

"You are openly violating, defying, and setting at nought the good and
wholesome laws of the Province under which you live. I warn you,
exhort, and require each of you, thus unlawfully assembled, forthwith
to disperse, and to surcease all further unlawful proceedings at your
utmost peril."

Tom, and all around him hissed.

"We won't disperse till we've done our business," shouted a man in the
centre of the house.

"We will attend to our affairs, and Tommy Hutchinson may mind his own
business," cried another.

"Let us hear from Mr. Rotch," the shout.

Mr. Rotch, a young merchant, wearing a broad-brimmed hat, and who
owned the Dartmouth, rose.

"I am willing the tea should go back without being landed," he said.

The people clapped their hands.

"Hall! Hall! Let us hear from Captain Hall," they cried.

The captain of the Dartmouth, sunburned by exposure, said it made no
difference to him. He would just as soon carry the tea back as
anything else. Once more the people decided the tea should not be
brought on shore. To prevent its being landed it was voted that the
watch should be maintained; that if the attempt was made by day, the
meetinghouse bells would ring, if by night, they were to toll.

A few days later, the Beaver, commanded by Captain Coffin, and the
Elenor, commanded by Captain Bruce, arrived. Tom, once more looking
down the harbor, saw the warship Kin