Dennis was like a guardian sent to him, and Peter like a messenger sent to Dennis. There was something in the glances of each to the other that was out of the common of life—it was the cause.
One day there was a shout in the alarm-post.
A man was riding up the Colchester road, dashing, as it were, as if his own body and that of his horse were only agents of this thought. He was an Irishman. When the Lexington alarm came, he had heard the clock of liberty strike; his hour had come.
“A man is coming like mad, riding with the wind,” said the sentinel in common terms.
The man came rushing up to the store, and drew his rein. The Governor met him there.
“Knox, your Honor, Knox of the artillery. I was at Bunker Hill.”
“I know you by your good name,” said the Governor. “You know how to put your shoulder to the wheel.”
Knox of the artillery smiled.
He had won the reputation of knowing how to put his shoulder to the wheel in a queer way. There was a rivalry between the Northenders and Southenders in Boston, and both parties celebrated Guy Fawkes’s day with grotesque processions, in which were effigies of Guy Fawkes and the devil. In an evening procession of the party to which young Knox belonged on Guy Fawkes’s day the wheel of the wagon or float bearing an effigy, possibly of Guy Fawkes, broke, and that the rival party might not know it and ridicule his party, he said:
“I will put my shoulder to the wheel.”