Page:History of Gardner, Massachusetts (1860) - Glazier.djvu/81

Rh the voice and bayonet of the soldier. Sentries paced before the house of Mr. Allen, the clerk, where Judge Ward resided, and the former gentleman was threatened with violence on his own threshholdthreshold [sic]. Justice Washburn, of Leicester, was opposed on his way, and two of his friends, who seized the gun presented to his breast, were arrested and detained in custody. Justice Baker, on his return homeward was apprehended in the road, and some of his captors suggested the propriety of sending him to prison, to experience the corrective discipline, to which, as a magistrate, he had subjected others.

On Tuesday evening, a council of war was convened, and it was seriously determined to march to Boston, and effect the liberation of the State prisoners as soon as sufficient strength could be collected. In anticipation of attack, the Governor gathered the means of defence around the metropolis. Guards were mounted at the prison, and at the entrances of the city: alarm posts were assigned; and Major General Brooks held the militia of Middlesex contiguous to the road, in readiness for action, and watched the force at Worcester.

During the evening of Tuesday, an alarm broke out, more terrific to the party quartered at the Hancock Arms, than that which had disturbed the repose of the preceding night. Soon after partaking the refreshment which was sometimes used by the military, before the institution of temperance societies, several of the men were seized with violent sickness, and a rumor spread, that poison had been mingled with the fountain which supplied their water. Dr. Samuel Stearns, of Paxton, astrologer, almanac manufacturer, and quack by profession, detected in the sediment of the cups they had drained, a substance, which he unhesitatingly pronounced to