“All you know, Dick, is how to play tunes on your grandfather’s fife.”
The words hurt the little lad and his face flushed. He was about to retort, but the boys and girls scattered, some running ahead swinging their school bags, some stopping to look at the sweets in Dame Brewster’s bake-shop window. Dick waited until he saw that he was alone. Then he hurried on down the street and he did not stop until he had reached the recruiting station and turned in at the gate.
The sun touched their ranks with gold and the summer wind carried the Stars and Stripes before them the day in 1777 when the new volunteer regiment left Hartford. It was on its long, weary way over rough roads to Peekskill on the Hudson, the headquarters of General Putnam. All Hartford was gathered on the wide piazzas and green streets to cheer the regiment on its way. All the children were there, too, waving their caps and bonnets.
All? No, one child was missing.
As the lines of blue swung along beneath the great old trees, the sound of a fife playing an old marching tune came piping above the shouting and the cheers of the crowd. Suddenly every one was quiet as the drummer came into sight and beside him a little lad of ten years, dressed in the uniform of the Colonies and playing a fife.
“Richard Jones!” the children whispered in excitement to each other. “It is our Dick, going to war with the regiment.”
An old man leaning on his cane at the edge of the crowd took off his hat and called to Dick.
“Good-bye, little lad. If you play your fife as well as Grandfather taught you, it will put heart into the soldiers and strength in their arms. It was your fine piping that won you a place in the regiment, the youngest soldier of the Revolution. God save you and bring you back safe to us.”
Hearing him, Dick stopped playing a moment and called out, “Good-bye, Grandfather. I’ll try to do my duty. Good-bye!”
Then he was lost to sight,—a little figure in a blue coat and knee breeches, Richard Lord Jones, enlisted at ten years in the army of the American colonies.