"That was just good for him!" exclaimed Lulu. "I wonder what he said to it,--if he answered her at all."
"He was very angry (for no doubt the words stung him) and laid his hand on the hilt of his sword, while he regarded her with a frown," replied the Captain. "But General Leslie, his superior officer said, 'Say what you please, Mrs. Ashe; Colonel Tarleton knows better than to insult a lady in my presence.'"
"Did Tarleton ever insult a lady, Papa?" asked Gracie.
"I have read that he once insulted an American woman,--one who was large and strong,--and that she knocked him down upon the floor, seized him by the throat, and choked him till he was black in the face; she probably would have killed him if some one had not come to his assistance and pulled her off."
"Surely he must have been proud of _that_ encounter," laughed Max.
There were several more souvenirs of the Revolution shown the young people by Captain Raymond that morning,--among them Boston's "Liberty Tree," or rather the sculptured representation of it set within a niche on the front of a house, and exactly over the spot on which the tree stood before its destruction by the British during the siege of Boston.
"It was under that tree the association calling themselves 'Sons of Liberty' used to hold their meetings," he said. "They met there in the summer of 1765 when there was a great excitement over the passage of the Stamp Act by the British Parliament, and continued to do so until the destruction of the tree by the British during the siege of Boston, 1775. It was called 'Liberty Tree' and the ground under it 'Liberty Hall.'
"A newspaper of that time, the 'Essex Gazette,' of Aug. 31st, 1775, describes the destruction of the tree. It says, 'They made a furious attack upon it and after a long spell of laughing, grinning, sweating and foaming with malice diabolical they cut down the tree because it bore the name of Liberty. A soldier was killed by falling from one of its branches during the operation.'"
It was dinner time when our party reached the hotel, where they had left Grandma Elsie and Violet with the little ones and their maids. The ladies had not cared to join in the morning's excursion as they wanted to do a little shopping, and had already seen Concord, Lexington, and the places of historical interest in the city itself.