nging his hat and
shaking his fist.

"Oh father! mother! it is Tom! He's swinging his hat! Just see him!"
she cried.

Again the cannon flamed, but with the flashing Tom leaped back into
the trench and was safe from the shot.

"I'm glad he's there. He's got the true stuff in him," said Mr.
Brandon.

"I'm afraid he'll be killed!" exclaimed Mrs. Brandon, manifesting the
mother's solicitude and love.

"I glory in his pluck," said Berinthia.

People came from other sections of the town to behold the impending
battle.

"May we presume to trespass upon your hospitality, Captain Brandon,"
asked Mr. Newville, "and, if you have room, see this approaching
contest from your housetop?"

"Certainly. We give you and your family hearty welcome. We doubtless
shall see it from different political standpoints; you are truly loyal
to the king; my sympathies, as you know, are with the provincials, but
that shall not diminish our personal friendship or my hospitality,"
Captain Brandon replied, escorting Mr. and Mrs. Newville and Miss
Newville to the top of the house and providing them seats.

The forenoon wore away; Mrs. Brandon was busy preparing a lunch, and
Chloe soon had the table elaborately supplied with ham, tongue, the
whitest bread, appetizing cheese, doughnuts, and crumpets. The company
partook of the collation, drank each a glass of wine, and then
ascended to the roof again.

Berinthia informed Ruth that Tom was in the redoubt. She had seen him
through the telescope, standing on the embankment and waving his hat.

Lieutenant Robert Walden, at the moment, was five miles away, in
Medford town, delivering a message to Colonel John Stark to hasten
with his regiment to Bunker Hill.

The meetinghouse bell was ringing the hour of noon when the drummer
beat the long roll for the parading of the regiment. The men filed
past the quarter-master's tent and each received a gill of powder in
his horn. And then with quickened step they crossed the Mystic and
hastened along the road.

With the shot from the Symetry screeching around them, tossing the
gravel in their faces, the men from New Hampshire crossed the neck of
land, ascended the hill, and came into position by a low stone wall
surmounted by rails. Lieutenant Walden's company was nearest the
Mystic River. Captain Daniel Moore's came next in line. The regiment
with Colonel Reed's New Hampshire regiment extended to the foot of the
hill, in the direction of the redoubt.