The First Capture; or, Hauling Down the Flag of England

this particular time it was in a regular turmoil. Men had jumped up leaving their breakfast half eaten and ran out bareheaded to gather round a courier, who, sitti

to communicate that had incited such a feeling among those who listened to him? He was describing the battle of Lexington which had been fought and won by the patriots on the 19th day of April. We di

knew that he could not talk fast enough, bu

the bud, and his first move was to seize and destroy the stores of the patriots at Concord, a little village located about six miles from Lexington. To carry out this plan he sent forth eight hundred men under the command of Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn with orders to "seize, burn and otherwise render useless

oner was the trampling of soldiers heard than two lights were hung in the steeple of Christ Church in Charlestown. Paul Revere saw the lights, and he forthwith mounted his horse and started to carry the warning to every vi

uld be putting it very mildly; but Major Pitcairn, after a short consultation with his superior officer, rode up and flourished his sword as if he meant to annihilate the minute-me

y down your arms! Why don't

t care to come too close to them but wheeled his horse, discharged his pistol and shouted "Fire!" and the British obeyed him. The front rank fired, and when the smoke cleared away, seven men, the first martyrs of the Revolution, were found weltering in

d Major Pitcairn, as he kept a close watch upon the neighbo

e them," replied Colonel Smith. "But being rebe

t; and it was not a moment too soon. The whole region flew to arms, for remember that Paul Revere had aroused to vigilance the inmates of every house he came to, and from every one there came a man or boy who was strong enough to handle a

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ad not been for reinforcements not one of those eight hundred men would ever have reached the city alive. As one of their officers expressed it: "the militia seemed to have dropped from the clouds," and the flower of that British army must have surrendered to those patriots if relief had not arrived. Their retreat was regarded as a defeat and a flight, an

ed and angry-astonished to know that the British soldiers, who had been regarded as invulnerable, could be outdone with Am

ts in the air. "That is too many of our men to go up after fighting those redcoats. Boston ha

was that of a patriot, but there were a few who were known to be Tori

a friend at his el

you," said Zeke, after holding a short consultation with a young ma

ot down as those redcoats wer

hey would have been glad to deny it if they could, but there were too many stalwart sailors standing around whose opinions differed from their own, and they thought it

and their eyes fastened thoughtfully on the ground. Among them was one, Enoch Crosby by name, who seemed to think that the world was coming to an end

country, was placed there by divine right. The people had nothing to do with it except to hold themselves in readiness to obey his orders. He had English blood in his veins, and, although he felt the soil of America under his feet, he had bee

ould still be loyal to his sovereign and ready to smite hip and thigh any one who said anything agains

g to Enoch, and he hoped that the time would soon come when something would induce the King to do differently. But when Christopher Snyder was killed by Richardson for looking on at a mob who were engaged in throwing clods and stones at him, and Governor Hutchinson refused to sign Richardson's death warrant, it opened the eyes of Enoch and he began to see things in a plainer light. The man was put into prison, but at the end of two y

he was at home he was not idle. His mother had enough from the earnings of her husband to support her in as good a style as she cared to live; the raiment of herself and son was neat and comely, but that did no

ent, and the face he brought back with him excited his mother's alarm at once. Like her

knitting into her lap. "That man's horse se

, dropping into the nearest chair. "But I don

osby; although something told her that the news the m

ge can make up his mind to one thing, and that is, he had better keep his men at home. T

a fight sure enough

d to have with the Indians. They k

in her chair and looked a