MERRIAM’S CORNER
Once more the British were on the march.
Roger, rested and invigorated, ran through a pasture, crouched behind a bowlder, rested his gun upon it, and sent a bullet into the ranks. He was delighted when Doctor Joseph Warren came galloping over the hill. The doctor said he left Boston in the morning, rode to Cambridge and Watertown, then hastened on to Lexington. He was glad the minute-men and militia had resisted the British. While talking with Roger and those around him, a bullet whizzed past the doctor’s head, knocking a pin from his ear-lock.
The rattling fire of the minute-men was increasing once more,—answered by volleys from Percy’s platoons. The British, smarting under the tormenting fusilade, angry over the thought that they were being assailed by a rabble of farmers and were on the defensive, became wanton and barbaric, pillaging houses, and murdering inoffensive old men.
Roger was delighted to hear from Jonathan Loring, one of the Lexington minute-men, how his sister Lydia, fearing that the British would steal the communion cups and platters belonging to the church of which her father was deacon, took them in her apron, ran out into the orchard, and hid them under a pile of brush.
Pitiful it was to see Widow Mulliken’s house in flames,—wantonly set on fire by the red-coated ruffians.