Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/38

30 in the good cause before; but she was resolute.

"Very well!" replied she, coolly, "if you prefer the king to me, it's not my fault; when your side beats, you can take your revenge!"

The thorough injustice of this speech roused her lover's generous indignation.

"If you can think that way of me, Sally, it is better for us both to have me go! Good night!" And away strode the loyal fellow, never looking back to see his sweetheart have a good cry on the pine-log, and then an equally comfortable fit of laughter; for she knew very well how restless Mister George would be, all alone by himself, and how much it meant that they both loved each other, and both knew it.

Sally's heart was stout. A sort of Yankee Evangeline, she would not have gone after Gabriel; she would have staid at home and waited for him to the end of time; doing chores and mending meanwhile, but unmarried, in the fixed intention of being her lover's sixth wife possibly, but his wife at last.

So she went home and got supper, strained and skimmed milk, set a sponge for bread, and slept all night like a dormouse. George Tucker never went to bed.

"Hooraw!" roared Long Snapps, trundling in to dinner, the next day; "they're wakin' up down to Bostin! Good many on 'em's quit the town. Them 'are Britishers is a-gettin' up sech a breeze; an' they doo say the reg'lars is comin' out full sail, to cair' off all the amminition in these parts, fear o' mutiny 'mongst the milishy!"

"Come along!" shouted Zekle, "let 'em come! like to see 'em takin' our powder an' shot 'thout askin'! Guess they'll hear thunder, ef they stick their heads inter a hornet's nest."

"Dredful suz!" exclaimed Aunt Poll, pulling turnips out of the pot with reckless haste, and so scalding her brown fingers emphatically; "be they a-comin' here? will they fetch along the batterin' rams?"

"Thunder an' dry trees," ejaculated Zekle, "what does the woman "; but at that instant Long made for the door, and flung it open, thereby preventing explanations.

"Goin' to Concord, George?" shouted he to George Tucker, who in a one-horse wagon and his Sunday-best clothes was driving slowly past.

"No! goin' to Lexington, after corn. Can I do anything for you?"

"Well, no, I 'xpect not. When be you a-comin' back?"

"I don't know."

"Well, go long! good-luck to ye; keep to wind'ard o' squalls, George."

Long nodded, and George drove on. That day the whole village of Westbury was in an uproar. News had come from Boston that the British were about to send out forces to possess themselves of all the military stores in the country, and forestall rebellion by rendering it helpless. From every corner of every farm and village, young men and old mustered; from every barn, horses of all sizes and descriptions were driven out and saddled; rusty muskets, balls of all shapes and of any available metal that would melt and run, disabled broadswords, horse-pistols, blunderbusses, whatever wore any resemblance to a weapon, or could be rendered serviceable to that end,—all were hunted out, cleaned, mended, and laid ready;—an array that might have made a properly drilled and equipped army smile in contempt, but whose deficiencies were more than supplied by iron sinews, true blood, resolve and desperate courage.

Sally and Aunt Poll partook the gale of patriotism. They scoured the "ole queen's arm" to brilliancy; they ran bullets by the hour; baked bread and brewed Spring beer, with no more definite purpose than a general conviction that men must and would eat, as the men of their house certainly did, in the intervals of repairing harness, filling powder-horns and shot-belts, trotting over to the tavern after news, and coming back to retail it, till Aunt Poll began to