"Now, Joe," she said. "we'll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers want corn they'll take good ears and never think of touching poor nubbins"; so they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until it was completely concealed from view.
Then he sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and took one glance out. "Oh, I see them, the Red- coats.
True's I live, there go the militia UP THE HILL. I thought they was going to stand and defend. Shame on 'em, I say." Jumping down and crying back to Mother Moulton, "I'm going to stand by the minute men," he went down, three steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who, with many groans was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.
"What did you help her for, you scamp," he demanded of Joe, flourishing his staff unpleasantly near the lad's head.
" 'Cause she asked me to, and couldn't do it alone," returned Joe, dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene, at the very moment Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.
"Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay," she added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.
Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare, and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil, and the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and home-spun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation, to any discerning soldier of the king.
A smile broke suddenly over her face, displacing for a brief second every trace of care. "It's my only weapon, and I must use it," she said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest and straightway disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.
As she fastened back her gown and hurried away the signs of the breakfast she had not eaten, the clear pink tints seemed to come out with added beauty of coloring in her cheeks; while her hair seemed fairer and whiter than at any moment in her three-score and eleven years.
Once more Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the picture she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet the robbers! My, how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and hide behind the nubbins. They'll be here in less than five minutes now," he cried, "and I'm going over the North Bridge to see what's going on there."
"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and she was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the thought, "They'll treat me with more respect if I LOOK respectable, and if I must die, I'll die good-looking in my best clothes, anyhow."
She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers, and then drew out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was always lying. Recollecting that the British soldiers probably belonged to the Church of England, she hurried away to fetch Uncle John's "prayer-book."
"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I know," she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of the well, and where she could also command a view of the staircase, she sat and waited for coming events.
Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up.
They're close by, now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was a little afraid; that is to say he hadn't quite courage enough to go down, and, perhaps, encounter his own rheumatism and the king's soldiers on the same stairway, and yet, he felt that he must defend Martha as well as he could.
The rap of a musket, quick and ringing on the front door, startled the little woman from her apparent devotions. She did not move at the call of anything so profane. It was the custom of the time to have the front door divided into two parts, the lower half and the upper half. The former was closed and made fast, the upper could be swung open at will.
The soldier getting no reply, and doubtless thinking that the house was deserted, leaped over the chained lower half of the door.
At the clang of his bayonet against the brass trimmings, Martha Moulton groaned in spirit, for, if there was any one thing that she deemed essential to her comfort in this life, it was to keep spotless, speckless and in every way unharmed, the great knocker on her front door.
"Good, sound English metal, too," she thought, "that an English soldier ought to know how to respect."
As she heard the tramp of coming feet she only bent the closer over the Book of Prayer that lay open on her knee. Not one word did she read or see; she was inwardly trembling and outwardly watching the well and the staircase. But now, above all other sounds, broke the noise of Uncle John's staff thrashing the upper step of the staircase, and the shrill tremulous cry of the old man defiant, doing his utmost for the defense of his castle.
The fingers that lay beneath the book tingled with desire to box the old man's ears, for the policy he was pursuing would be fatal to the treasure in garret and in well; but she was forced to silence and inactivity.
