mplements for all, but when one
was out of breath, another took his place, and before the first
glimmer of dawn appeared, the trench had been made breast deep.

"Four o'clock and all's well!" came from the sentinel on the Somerset,
but a moment later a sheet of flame and a white cloud burst from the
side of the Lively, and the roar of a gun broke the stillness of the
morning.

The thunder rolled far away, arousing the British army, the people of
Boston, General Gage, and Lord Howe from their slumbers. Berinthia
Brandon, from her chamber window, beheld the warship Lively shrouded
in smoke. Upon the green hill, where, the day before, the farmers had
been swinging their scythes, and where the partially cured hay was
lying in windrows, she could see a bank of yellow earth. Again the
thunder of the guns jarred her window, but at a signal from the
Somerset the firing ceased.

Before sunrise all Boston was astir, moving towards Copp's Hill,
gazing from windows and roofs upon the growing fortifications.
Generals Gage and Howe ascended the steeple of Christ Church and
looked at the embankment with their telescopes.[70] A little later
officers were hurrying along the streets with orders to the several
regiments to be ready to march at a moment's notice. Drums were
beating; battalions moving towards Long Wharf, the selected
rendezvous, from whence the troops were to be transported in boats to
Moulton's Point, ascend the hill, and send the provincials flying from
their chosen position.

[Footnote 70: The headquarters of General Gage were in the house of
Mr. Galloup, on Hull Street, a stone's-throw from Christ Church. The
house, a two-story wooden building with a gambrel roof, is still
standing (1895).]

Such was the information brought to the Brandon home by Abraham
Duncan.

"You will have a splendid chance to see the battle from the housetop,"
he said to Captain Brandon.

Cannon carriages were rumbling through the street, passing the Brandon
home, wheeling into the burial ground, and coming into position. The
gunners loaded the pieces and lighted their port fires, waved their
lint-stocks, and touched them to the priming. Flames and smoke belched
from the muzzle of the guns with deafening roar, sending the missiles
upon the fortification.

While the cannoneers were reloading the guns, Berinthia, upon the
housetop with a telescope, saw a man leap up from the intrenchment and
stand in full view upon the bank of earth, swi