"I know you," spoke up Jeremy, at this juncture. "You went up the Neck with us this morning. I saw you."
"Then you are the boy who got first into Boston this morning, are you, sir?"
"Now, Jeremy, down with you and wait here for me. You haven't had small-pox," said Aunt Hannah.
"But the oxen won't mind you," said Jeremy.
Aunt Hannah was troubled. She never had driven oxen.
At the moment who should appear but Mr. Wooster. He gladly offered to take the basket and deliver it at Mrs. Jagger's door.
"Don't go in, mind! Mother's had small-pox," called Jeremy, as he started.
"I'm tired," gasped Aunt Hannah, who had done baking enough for a small army that day, as she sat down to rest on the broad seat of the cart, and the two started for home. The soldier at the gate scarcely heeded them as they went out, for roasted chicken "tasted so good."
"I'm so glad the British are out of Boston," said Aunt Hannah, as she touched home soil again and went wearily up the walk to the little dark house.
"And so am I," said Jeremy to the oxen, as he turned them in for the night; "only if I'd had my way, they wouldn't have gone without one good fair fight. You've done your duty, anyhow," he added, soothingly, with a parting stroke to the honest laborer who went in last, "and you deserve well of your country, too, for like Gen. Washington, you have served without hope of reward. The thing I like best about the man is that he don't work for money. I don't want my sixpence a day for cutting willows; and--I won't--take it." And he didn't take it, consoling himself with the reflection "that he would be like Gen. Washington in one thing, anyhow."
A hundred years ago the winds of March were blowing.
To-day the same winds rush by the stone memorials and sweep across the low mounds that securely cover the men and the women that then were alive to chill blast and stirring event. Even the lads who gathered at sound of drum and fife on village green, wishing, as they saw the troopers march, that they were men, and the little girls who hung about father's neck because he was going off to war, who watched the post-riders on their course, wishing that they knew the news he carried, are no longer with us.
For nearly two years Boston had been the lost town of the people. It had been taken from the children by an unkind father and given to strangers. You have been told how British ships came and closed her harbor, so that food and raiment could not enter. You know how grandly the younger sister towns behaved toward stately, hungry Boston; how they marched up the narrow neck of land that holds back the town from the sea, each and every one bearing gifts to the beloved town, until there came the sad and fatal day wherein British military lines turned back the tide of offerings and closed the gate of entrance.