He also noticed that the grenadiers and light infantry guards were not on duty as on other days.
He hastened to inform Doctor Warren, who sent a messenger with a letter to the committee of safety.
It was evening when Richard Devens and Abraham Watson, members of the committee of safety, shook hands with their fellow members, Elbridge Gerry, Asa Orne, and Colonel Lee at Wetherby’s, bade them good-night, and stepped into their chaise to return to their homes in Charlestown. The others would spend the night at Wetherby’s, and they would all meet in Woburn in the morning.
Satisfying to the appetite was the dinner which landlord Winship set before a dozen British officers,—roast beef, dish gravy, mealy potatoes, plum-pudding, mince pie, crackers and cheese, prime old port, and brandy distilled from the grapes of Bordeaux.
“We will jog on slowly; it won’t do to get there too early,” said one of the officers as they mounted their horses and rode up past the green, and along the wide and level highways, towards Menotomy, paying no attention to Solomon Brown, plodding homeward in his horse-cart from market. When the old mare lagged to a walk, they rode past him; when he stirred her up with his switch she made the old cart rattle past them. The twinkling eyes peeping out from under his shaggy brows saw that their pistols were in the holsters, and their swords were clanking at times.
“I passed nine of them,” he said to Sergeant Munroe when he reached Lexington Common; and the sergeant, mistrusting they might be coming to nab Adams and Hancock, summoned eight of his company to guard the house of Mr. Clark.
Mr. Devens and Mr. Watson met the Britishers.
“They mean mischief. We must let Gerry, Orne, and Joe know,” Mr. Devens said.