chaise to return to their homes in Charlestown.
The others would spend the night at Wetherby's, and they would all
meet in Woburn in the morning.

Satisfying to the appetite was the dinner which landlord Winship set
before a dozen British officers,--roast beef, dish gravy, mealy
potatoes, plum-pudding, mince pie, crackers and cheese, prime old
port, and brandy distilled from the grapes of Bordeaux.

"We will jog on slowly; it won't do to get there too early," said one
of the officers as they mounted their horses and rode up past the
green, and along the wide and level highways, towards Menotomy, paying
no attention to Solomon Brown, plodding homeward in his horse-cart
from market. When the old mare lagged to a walk, they rode past him;
when he stirred her up with his switch she made the old cart rattle
past them. The twinkling eyes peeping out from under his shaggy brows
saw that their pistols were in the holsters, and their swords were
clanking at times.

"I passed nine of them," he said to Sergeant Munroe when he reached
Lexington Common; and the sergeant, mistrusting they might be coming
to nab Adams and Hancock, summoned eight of his company to guard the
house of Mr. Clark.

Mr. Devens and Mr. Watson met the Britishers.

"They mean mischief. We must let Gerry, Orne, and Joe know," Mr.
Devens said.

Quickly the chaise turned, and they rode back to Wetherby's. The moon
was higher in the eastern sky, and the hands of the clock pointed to
the figure nine when the officers rode past the house.

"We must put Adams and Hancock on their guard," said Mr. Gerry; and a
little later a messenger on horseback was scurrying along a bypath
towards Lexington.

In Boston, Abraham Duncan was keeping his eyes and ears open.

"What's the news, Billy?" was his question to Billy Baker, apprentice
to Mr. Hall, who sold toddy to the redcoats.

"I guess something is going to happen," said Billy.

"What makes you think so?"

"'Cause a woman who belongs to one of the redcoats was in just now
after a toddy; she said the lobsters were going somewhere."

"Is that so?"

"Yes; and they are packing their knapsacks."

Abraham whispered it to Doctor Warren, and a few minutes later William
Dawes was mounting his old mare and riding toward Roxbury. She was
thin in flesh, and showed her ribs; and the man on her back, who
dressed calf-skins for a living, jogged along Cornhill as if in no
hurry. The red-coated sentinels, keeping guard