"Oh, I didn't mean to lift THAT THING," he made haste to explain, "but to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been doing half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used to be a honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything. Silver spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's words were interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off to learn the news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had been offered to him.
Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes ablaze with excitement. "They're a coming!" he cried. "They're in sight down by the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill, do!"
"You don't mean that its really true that the soldiers are coming here, RIGHT INTO OUR TOWN," cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste and bringing together with rapid flourishes to right and to left, every fragment of silver on the table. Uncle John strove to hold fast his individual spoon, but she twitched it without ceremony out from his rheumatic old fingers, and ran next to the parlor cupboard, wherein lay her movable valuables.
"What in the world shall I do with them," she cried, returning with her apron well filled with treasures, and borne down by the weight thereof.
"Give 'em to me," cried Joe. "Here's a basket, drop 'em in, and I'll run like a brush-fire through the town and across the old bridge, and hide 'em as safe as a weasel's nap."
Joe's fingers were creamy; his mouth was half filled with Johnny-cake, and his pocket on the right bulged to its utmost capacity with the same, as he held forth the basket; but the little woman was afraid to trust him, as she had been afraid to trust her neighbors.
"No! No!" she replied, to his repeated offers. "I know what I'll do. You, Joe Devins, stay right where you are till I come back, and, don't you ever LOOK out of the window."
"Dear, dear me!" she cried, flushed and anxious when she was out of sight of Uncle John and Joe. "I WISH I'd given 'em to Col.
Barrett when he was here before daylight, only, I WAS afraid I should never get sight of them again."
She drew off one of her stockings, filled it, tied the opening at the top with a string-plunged stocking and all into a pail full of water and proceeded to pour the contents into the well.
Just as the dark circle had closed over the blue stockings, Joe Devin's face peered down the depths by her side, and his voice sounded out the words: "O Mother Moulton, the British will search the wells the VERY first thing. Of course, they EXPECT to find things in wells!"
"Why didn't you tell me before, Joe? but now it is too late."
"I would, if I'd known what you was going to do; they'd been a sight safer, in the honey tree."
"Yes, and what a fool I've been--flung MY WATCH into the well with the spoons!"
"Well, well! Don't stand there, looking," as she hovered over the high curb, with her hand on the bucket. "Everybody will know, if you do, there."
"Martha! Martha?" shrieked Uncle John's quavering voice from the house door.
"Bless my heart!" she exclaimed, hurrying back over the stones.
"What's the matter with your heart?" questioned Joe.
"Nothing. I was thinking of Uncle John's money," she answered.
"Has he got money?" cried Joe. "I thought he was poor, and you took care of him because you were so good" Not one word that Joe uttered did the little woman hear. She was already by Uncle John's side and asking him for the key to his strong box.
Uncle John's rheumatism was terribly exasperating. "No, I won't give it to you!" he cried, "and nobody shall have it as long as I'm above ground."
"Then the soldiers will carry it off," she said.
"Let 'em!" was his reply, grasping his staff firmly with both hands and gleaming defiance out of his wide, pale eyes. "YOU won't get the key, even if they do."
At this instant, a voice at the doorway shouted the words, "Hide, hide away somewhere, Mother Moulton, for the Red-coats are in sight this minute!"
She heard the warning, and giving one glance at Uncle John, which look was answered by another, "no, you won't have it," she grasped Joe Devins by the collar of his jacket and thrust him before her up the staircase, so quickly that the boy had no chance to speak, until she released her hold at the entrance to Uncle John's room.
The idea of being taken prisoner in such a manner, and by a woman, too, was too much for the lad's endurance. "Let me go!" he cried, the instant he could recover his breath. "I won't hide away in your garret, like a woman, I won't. I want to see the militia and the minute men fight the troops, I do."
"Help me first, Joe. Here, quick now; let's get this box out and up garret. We'll hide it under the corn and it'll be safe," she coaxed.
The box was under Uncle John's bed.
"What's in the old thing any how?" questioned Joe, pulling with all his strength at it.
The box, or chest, was painted red, and was bound about by massive iron bands.
"I've never seen the inside of it," said Mother Moulton. "It holds the poor old soul's sole treasure, and I DO want to save it for him if I can."
They had drawn it with much hard endeavor, as far as the garret stairs, but their united strength failed to lift it. "Heave it, now!" cried Joe, and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a thudding thump; every one of which thumps Uncle John heard, and believed to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder, until it was fairly shelved on the garret floor.
In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been heard crying out, "Let my box alone! Don't break it open.
If you do, I'll--I'll--" but, whatever the poor man MEANT to threaten as a penalty, he could not think of anything half severe enough to say and so left it uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.
"Poor old soul!" ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge.
