From the house of Reverend Mr. Clark, Paul Revere, William Dawes, and young Doctor Prescott of Concord, who had been sparking his intended wife in Lexington village, started on their horses up the road towards Concord. From the deep shade of the alders a half dozen men suddenly confronted them.
“Surrender, or I will blow out your brains!” shouts one of the officers.
BUCKMAN’S TAVERN
Revere and Dawes are prisoners; but Doctor Prescott, quick of eye, ear, and motion, is leaping his horse over the stone wall, riding through fields and pastures, along bypaths, his saddle-bags flopping, his horse, young and fresh, bearing him swiftly on over the meadows to the slumbering village, with the news that the redcoats are coming.[57]
“Tell us where we can find those arch traitors to his majesty the king, or you are dead men,” the threat of an officer.
Paul Revere sees the muzzle of the pistol within a foot of his breast, but it does not frighten him.