"I say, Joe Devins, go down and do--do something. There's _my niece_ a-feeding the murderers! I'll disown her. She shan't have a penny of my pounds, she shan't!"
Both Joe and Uncle John were compelled to remain in inaction, while below, the weary little woman acted the kind hostess to His Majesty's troops.
But now the feast was spent, and the soldiers were summoned to begin their painful march. Assembled on the green, all was ready, when Major Pitcairn, remembering the little woman who had ministered to his wants, returned to the house to say farewell.
'Twas but a step to her door, and but a moment since he had left it, but he found her crying; crying with joy, in the very chair where he had found her at prayers in the morning.
"I would like to say good-by," he said; "you've been very kind to me to-day."
With a quick dash or two of the dotted white apron (spotless no longer) to her eye, she arose. Major Pitcairn extended his hand, but she folded her own closely together, and said:
"I wish you a pleasant journey back to Boston, sir."
"Will you not shake hands with me before I go?"
"I can feed the enemy of my country, but shake hands with him, _never_!"
For the first time that day the little woman's love of country seemed to rise triumphant within her, and drown every impulse to selfishness; or, was it the nearness to safety that she felt? Human conduct is the result of so many motives that it is sometimes impossible to name the compound, although on that occasion Martha Moulton labelled it "Patriotism."
"And yet I put out the fire for you," he said.
"For your mother's sake, in old England, it was, you remember, sir."
"I remember," said Major Pitcairn, with a sigh, as he turned away.
"And for _her_ sake I will shake hands with you," said Martha Moulton.
So he turned back, and, across the threshold, in presence of the waiting troops, the commander of the expedition to Concord and the only woman in the town shook hands at parting.
Martha Moulton saw Major Pitcairn mount his horse; heard the order given for the march to begin--the march of which you all have heard. You know what a sorry time the Red Coats had of it in getting back to Boston; how they were fought at every inch of the way, and waylaid from behind every convenient tree-trunk, and shot at from tree-tops, and aimed at from upper windows, and besieged from behind stone walls, and, in short, made so miserable and harassed and overworn, that at last their depleted ranks, with the tongues of the men parched and hanging, were fain to lie down by the road-side and take what came next, even though it might be death. And then _the dead_ they left behind them!