'They've been usin' ye bad, haven't they?'
He came nearer and looked at me more closely than before. I tapped on the door with my foot.
'This is my bed,' I said. 'The food is plain, to say the least.'
Looking at my face, he said, 'It must be.'
All the time he had been standing at the lower side of the mine, where the water was well up about his ankles. When I told him the rock was almost dry where I was, he came and stood beside me. There was a sincere, honest look in the fellow's homely face, and when he asked me how I came to be there, I told him my story without keeping anything back.
'What has been takin' place outside?' I asked, when I had finished.
'What has been takin' place outside,' he repeated in a voice that rose almost to a shriek. 'What hasn't been takin' place? Have ye not heard?'
I assured him that I had heard nothing since the day of the funerals at Lexington.
'The day I sowed my oats,' he exclaimed; 'the very day, I mind it well. It was just after that they began scourin' the country. I lived three miles from here well back on my own small farm. Myself an' several of my neighbours had never taken any part in the disputes that were makin' so much trouble in Boston. It didn't concern us. We were poor, with families to keep, an' had no time to bother findin' out whether the King was right or wrong. We were gettin' a livin', an' were happy. The day o' the shootin', as well as the day o' the buryin', I went on with my farmin'.
'The time they come for me I was in my fiel' as usual. "We've come from the committee," they said. "What committee?" says I. "Oh," one o' them broke in,—he was a Boston chap, not one o' our peaceable farmers,—"Oh," says he, "is that all ye know about the affairs o' yer country? We're authorised by the Committee of Safety to visit every man in this county, and tell him he must either fight or flee."