'Goin' to enlist?' he asked.
'I am going out to Lexington to learn the truth about what happened there,' I said. 'Where are you from?'
'Out Concord way. I come from there last night, an' am on my way back. Day before yesterday I shot a redcoat, one o' them fancy soldiers the King sent to Boston two years ago to enforce his laws. I'll show you the place when we come to it.' I glanced at his face, and marked in it a note of triumphant glee.
'How long do you suppose the siege will last?' he said a little later.
'The siege,' I said, 'what siege?'
He stared at me for some moments. 'Where've ye been livin' lately, ye galoot? Don't ye know 'at Boston is besieged, an' that before two weeks we're to drive what we don't shoot uv the King's men into the harbour? That's the plan. That's good 'nough for 'em. Why couldn't they act decent, instead uv puttin' on airs an' insultin' folks. How much better is a soldier than a farmer, I'd like to know? Then think uv them laws. Go 'way back to the very first—back over a hundred years, when the trouble began by the surveyors puttin' the King's mark on all the pine-trees over two feet in diameter. Supposin' the King did want masts for his ships, what was the sense in puttin' his arrow on thousands of trees that would never be used? What justice was there in finin' a man a hundred pounds for cuttin' down an' sawin' up a tree that was bein' left to rot? Think uv my great grandfather spendin' three months in jail for cuttin' lumber to build his house. Was that right?
'An' that wasn't the only bad law. Why wouldn't the King allow people to build mills an' use the waterfalls? Who'd any right to say we couldn't sell fish or boards wherever we chose—even to the French or Spanish? Our people wanted to work an' they weren't allowed to. That's the way the trouble begun. An' then think uv all them later taxes on tea an' other things we 'ad to buy. Were we to go on for ever payin' an' payin', an' have nothin' to say about spendin' the money we paid in? No, sir; I'm glad war's come. Now we've a chance to get even with the King an' these saucy insultin' soldiers an' stuck-up officers, who've always been pokin' fun at our militia. Just wait till I get another chance at them. Then there's them Tories—all those people who've been sayin' the King's right an' England's right—they're little better'n the soldiers. But they'll soon find out that.—Are there any Tories up your way?' He broke off suddenly, and looking at me more critically than he had looked before, asked—
'What's your name?'
'Roger Davis,' I said at once, for I had determined to tell no lies.
'Davis?' he repeated. 'Davis?' Then he looked at me yet more critically. 'Yer father a merchant?'