BEGINNING OF A NEW ERA.

Roger Stanley, asleep in the old farmhouse on the banks of Concord River, was aroused from slumber by his mother.

“Roger!  Roger! the meetinghouse bell is ringing!” she shouted up the stairs to him.

With a bound he was on his feet, raised the window and heard the sweet-toned bell.  He understood its meaning, that the redcoats were coming.  Quickly putting on his clothes, he seized the powder-horn and bullet-pouch which his father carried at Louisburg.

“You must eat something, Roger, before you go,” said his mother.

A moment later and his breakfast was on the table, bread and butter, a slice of cold beef, a mug of cider.

“There’s no knowing when I shall be back, mother, for if the war has begun, as I fear it has, I shall be in the ranks till the last redcoat is driven from the country.”

“I know it, Roger.  Your father would have done just what you are doing.  I know you’ll do your duty.  You won’t show the white feather.  Here’s some lunch for you,” she said, putting a package into his knapsack.

“Good-by.”

Her arms were about his neck; tears were on her cheeks as she kissed his lips.

He ran across the meadow to the village.  The minute-men and militia were gathering.  In the stillness of the morning they could hear the report of guns far away, and knew that they of Sudbury and Acton were hearing the alarm.  People were hurrying to and fro in the village, loading barrels of flour into carts, removing the supplies purchased by the Committee of Safety.  Reverend Mr. Emerson was there with his gun and powder-horn.  Many times Roger had listened to his preaching.  It was gratifying to see him ready to stand in the ranks with his parishioners.  He told the women not to be frightened, and smiled upon the boys who took off their hats, and the girls who courtesied to him.

They heard, far away, the drumbeat of the advancing British.

No messengers had arrived to inform the minute-men of Concord what had happened at Lexington; for Doctor Prescott did not know that British muskets had fired a fatal volley.

From the burial ground Roger could look far down the road and see the sunlight glinting from the bayonets of the grenadiers, as the red-coated platoons emerged from the woodland into the open highway.

Major Buttrick with the minute-men and Colonel Barrett with the militia formed in line by the liberty pole.

“Prime and load!” his order.

Roger poured the powder into the palm of his hand, emptied it into the gun, and rammed it home with a ball.  Never had he experienced such a sensation as at the moment.  He was not doing it to take aim at a deer or fox, but to send it through the heart of a fellow-being if need be; to maintain justice and liberty.  He could die in their defense; why should it trouble him, then, to think of shooting those who were assailing what he held so dear?

“I am doing right.  Liberty shall live, cost what it may,” he said to himself as he poured the priming into the pan.

On in serried ranks came the British.

“We are too few, they are three to our one.  We must cross the river and wait till we are stronger,” said Colonel Barrett.

They were only two hundred.  They filed into the road, marched past the Reverend Mr. Emerson’s house to the north bridge, crossed the river, and came to a halt on a hill overlooking the meadows, the village, and surrounding country.  They could see the British dividing,-­one party crossing the south bridge and going towards Colonel Barrett’s house to destroy the supplies collected there; another party advancing to the north bridge.  Roger saw groups of officers in the graveyard using their spy-glasses.  A soldier was cutting down the liberty pole.  Other soldiers were entering houses, helping themselves to what food was left on the breakfast-tables or in the pantries.  Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn rested themselves in Mr. Wright’s tavern.

“I’ll stir the Yankee blood before night, just as I stir this brandy,” said Pitcairn, stirring the spirit in his tumbler with his finger.

A party of British crossed the south bridge, made their way to Colonel Barrett’s house, and burned the cannon carriages stored in his barn.

Roger was glad to see Captain Isaac Davis and the minute-men of Acton march up the hill to join them.  Captain Davis was thirty years old.  He had kissed his young wife and four children good-by.

“Take good care of the children, Hannah,” he said as he bade her farewell.

Twice a week he had drilled his company.  He was brave, resolute, kind-hearted.  His men loved him because he demanded strict obedience.  They had stopped long enough at his home for his young wife to powder their hair, that they might appear neat and trim like gentlemen when meeting the British.  They were thirty-five, all told.  Keeping step to Luther Blanchard’s fifing of the White Cockade, and Francis Barker’s drumming, they marched past the men from Concord and formed on their left.

“Order arms!” They rested their muskets on the ground and wiped the perspiration from their foreheads.

Men from Westford, Lincoln, and Carlisle are arriving.  They are four hundred now.  The officers stand apart, talking in low tones.  The redcoats had crossed the bridge to the western bank.

“Let us drive the redcoats across the river,” said Captain Smith.

“I haven’t a man that is afraid,” said Captain Davis.

He was heavy-hearted in the early morning when he kissed the young wife and took the baby from the cradle in his arms, but is resolute now.

“Attention, battalion!  Trail arms!  Left in front!  March!” Luther Blanchard pipes the tune, and the battalion-­the men of Acton leading-­descends the hill.

The redcoats had recrossed the river and were taking up the planks of the bridge.  A moment later muskets flash beneath the elms, and maples along the farthest bank and there is a whistling of bullets in the air.  Roger’s heart is in his throat, but he gulps it down.  Another volley, and Captain Davis, Abner Hosmer, and Luther Blanchard reel to the ground.  Never again will Hannah receive a parting kiss, or the father caress the baby crooning in the cradle.

“Fire!  For God’s sake, fire!” shouts Major Buttrick.  Roger cocks his gun, takes aim at the line of scarlet beneath the trees and pulls the trigger.  Through the smoke he sees men throw up their arms and tumble to the ground.  The scarlet line dissolves, the soldiers fleeing in confusion.  No longer is Roger’s heart in his throat.  His nerves are iron and the hot blood is coursing through his veins.  King George has begun the war; no longer is he his subject, but a rebel, never more to owe him allegiance.

The forenoon wore away.  The British were returning from Colonel Barrett’s, having destroyed the cannon carriages, thrown some bullets into a well, and broken open several barrels of flour.  It was past noon when they formed in line once more to return to Boston.

“We will head them off at Merriam’s Corner,” said Colonel Barrett.

The planks which the British had removed from the bridge were quickly replaced.  The minute-men crossed the stream, turned into a field to the left, and hastened over the meadow to the road leading to Bedford.  It was past three o’clock when they reached Mr. Merriam’s house.  Roger saw the British marching down the road.  Suddenly a platoon wheeled towards the minute-men and brought their guns to a level.  There was a flash, a white cloud, and bullets whistled over their heads.  Once more he took aim, as did others, and several redcoats fell.  Before he could reload, the serried ranks disappeared, marching rapidly towards Lexington.  The minute-men hastened on, and at the tavern of Mr. Brooks he sent another bullet into the ranks of the retreating foe.

“Scatter now!  Get upon their flank!  Pepper ’em from behind walls and trees!” shouted Colonel Barrett, who saw that it would be useless to follow the retreating enemy in battalion order, but each man, acting for himself, could run through fields and pastures and keep up a tormenting fire.

Acting upon the order, Roger and James Heywood ran through a piece of woods towards Fiske Hill.  They came upon a British soldier drinking at a well by a house.

“You are a dead man,” shouted the redcoat, raising his gun.

“So are you,” said Heywood.  Their muskets flashed and both fell, the Britisher with a bullet through his heart, and Heywood mortally wounded.

From rock heap, tree, fence, and thicket the guns of the minute-men were flashing.  The soldiers who had marched so proudly, keeping step to the drumbeat in the morning, were running now.  No hurrah went up as at sunrise on Lexington Common.  There was no halting at Buckman’s tavern, where they had fired their first volley.  Their ranks were in confusion.  Officers were trying to rally them, threatening to cut them down with their swords if they did not show a bold front to the minute-men, but the Yankees seemed to be everywhere and yet nowhere.  Bullets were coming from every direction, yet the British could see no men in line, no ranks at which they could take aim or charge with the bayonet.  They were still twelve miles from Boston, and their ammunition failing.  They were worn and weary with the all-night march, and were hungry and thirsty.  The road was strewn with their fallen comrades.  The wounded were increasing in number, impeding their retreat.  Their ranks were broken.  All was confusion.  Every moment some one was falling. Blessed the sight that greeted them,-­the brigade of Earl Percy, drawn up in hollow square by Mr. Munroe’s tavern, with two cannon upon the hillocks by the roadside.  They rushed into the square and dropped upon the ground, panting and exhausted with their rapid retreat.

Roger halted a few minutes on Lexington Green, where the conflict began in the morning.  He saw the ground stained with the blood of those who had fallen,-­crossed the threshold where Jonathan Harrington had died in the arms of his wife.  Across the Common the house and barn of Joseph Loring were in flames, set on fire by the British.

Earl Percy’s troops were ransacking the houses a little farther down the road.  In Mr. Munroe’s tavern they were compelling old John Raymond to bring them food, and because he could not give them what they wanted, sent a bullet through his heart.

Earl Percy made the tavern of Mr. Munroe his headquarters.

“A party entered the tavern and, helping themselves, or rather compelling the inmates of the house to help them to whatever they wanted, they treacherously and with ruthlessness shot down John Raymond, an infirm old man, only because he, alarmed at this roughness and brutal conduct, was about leaving the house to seek a place of greater safety.”  Hudson’s Hist. of Lexington.]

Once more the British were on the march.

Roger, rested and invigorated, ran through a pasture, crouched behind a bowlder, rested his gun upon it, and sent a bullet into the ranks.  He was delighted when Doctor Joseph Warren came galloping over the hill.  The doctor said he left Boston in the morning, rode to Cambridge and Watertown, then hastened on to Lexington.  He was glad the minute-men and militia had resisted the British.  While talking with Roger and those around him, a bullet whizzed past the doctor’s head, knocking a pin from his ear-lock.

The rattling fire of the minute-men was increasing once more,-­answered by volleys from Percy’s platoons.  The British, smarting under the tormenting fusilade, angry over the thought that they were being assailed by a rabble of farmers and were on the defensive, became wanton and barbaric, pillaging houses, and murdering inoffensive old men.

Roger was delighted to hear from Jonathan Loring, one of the Lexington minute-men, how his sister Lydia, fearing that the British would steal the communion cups and platters belonging to the church of which her father was deacon, took them in her apron, ran out into the orchard, and hid them under a pile of brush.

Pitiful it was to see Widow Mulliken’s house in flames,-­wantonly set on fire by the red-coated ruffians.

Roger saw a soldier deliberately raise his gun, take aim, and send a bullet through the heart of Jason Russel, an old gray-haired man, standing in his own door.  Again, at closer range, he took aim at the retreating column.

His indignation was aroused as he listened to the story told by Hannah Adams, a few minutes later.  She was in bed in her chamber, with a new-born babe at her breast, when two redcoats entered the room.  One pointed his musket at her.

“For the Lord’s sake, do not kill me,” she said.

“I am going to shoot you,” the soldier replied, with an oath.

“No, you mustn’t shoot a woman,” said the other, pushing aside the gun, “but we are going to set the house on fire, and you must get out.”

With the babe in her arms, she crawled downstairs and into the yard.

The soldiers scattered the coals from the fireplace around the room, and left, but the older children ran in and put out the flames.

At Mr. Cooper’s tavern was a ghastly sight; upon the floor lay the mangled bodies of Jason Wyman and Jesse Winship, two old men, who had come from their homes to learn the news.  They were drinking toddy, when the head of Earl Percy’s retreating troops arrived, and fired a volley into the house.  The landlord and his wife fled to the cellar.  The British swarmed into the tavern, mangled the bodies of the two old men with bayonet thrusts, and scattered their brains around the room.

In the morning Roger had felt some qualms of conscience as he took aim at the scarlet line of men by Concord River, but now to him the redcoats were fiends in human form.  It gave him fresh courage to see Samuel Whittemore, eighty years old, come running with his musket, taking deliberate aim, firing three times, and bringing down a redcoat every time he pulled the trigger.  But a soldier leaped from the ranks, ran upon and shot the old man, stabbed him with his bayonet, beat him with the butt of his musket, leaving him for dead.

Roger swung his hat to welcome Captain Gideon Foster of Danvers, and his company, who had marched sixteen miles in four hours, coming upon the British at Menotomy meetinghouse.  A moment later they were in the thick of the fight.

It was a thrilling story which Timothy Monroe had to tell, how he and Daniel Townsend fired, and each brought down a redcoat, and then ran into a house; how the British surrounded it, and killed Townsend; how he leaped through a window and ran, with a whole platoon firing at him, riddling his clothes with bullets, yet escaping without a scratch.

Again Roger rejoiced when he learned that before Earl Percy reached Menotomy a company of men had captured his baggage wagons, killing and wounding several British soldiers, and that the attacking party were led by Reverend Philip Payson, the minister of Chelsea.

It was almost sunset when Roger held his horn up to the light once more, and saw there was little more than enough powder for one charge, and that there were only two bullets in the pouch.  He decided to put in all the powder and both bullets for his parting shot.  Another half hour and they would be under the protection of the guns of the frigate Somerset.  The minute-men were getting so near and were so determined that Earl Percy ordered the cannon to unlimber and open fire, while the soldiers, almost upon the run, hastened towards Charlestown.

Roger, having reloaded his gun, made haste to overtake them.  Looking along the road, he saw a crowd of panic-stricken people-­men, women, and children-­fleeing from their houses.  The picture of the scene of Menotomy had stamped itself into his memory.  This last shot should be his best.  Not now would he crouch behind a fence, a tree, or bowlder.  He would confront the murderers like a man.  He walked deliberately forward.  He was by a farmhouse, so near the last file of soldiers which had halted to ward off the minute-men a moment, that he could see the whites of their eyes.  He aimed at the cross-belt of a man in the middle of the file, and pulled the trigger.  He caught a glimpse of a man falling, but found himself reeling to the ground.  A bullet had pierced his breast.  The British passed on.  A woman came from the house, and looked down into his face.

“A drink of water, please marm,” he said.

She ran to the well, sank the bucket into it, brought a gourd full, and came and crouched by his head while he drank.

“Thank you, marm.”

He looked up into her face a moment.

“I think I am going,” he whispered.

She pillowed his head upon her arm, laid back the hair from his manly brow, and fanned him with her apron.

“Please tell her,” he whispered.

“Tell who?”

She bowed her head to catch the word.

“Tell-­Rachel.”

The mild blue eyes were looking far away.  A smile like the light of the morning came upon his face.  One more breath, and he was one of the forty-nine who, during the day, gave their lives that they might inaugurate a new era in the republic of God.