Morose, silent, grunting, if he spoke at all, he lived in a mossy, gable-roofed house, with a huge woodpile before his door.
There was a great oak forest on rising ground above him. Below him was a cedar swamp, with a village of crows and crow-blackbirds, which all shouted in the morning, and told each other that the sun was rising.
He was in his heart true to the King. When the patriots of Lebanon came to him to talk politics after the Lexington alarm, he simply said, “I chop wood.”
Chop wood he did. His woodpile in front of his house was almost as high as his house itself. But he chopped on, and all through the winter his ax flew. And he split wood, hickory wood, with a warlike expression on his face, as his ax came down. He had one relative—a nephew, Peter, whom he taught to “fly around” and to “pick up his heels” in such a nervous way that people ceased to call him Peter Wetmore, but named him Peter Nimble. The boy was so abused by his uncle that he wore a scared look.
Lebanon was becoming one of the most patriotic towns in America. At one time during the Revolutionary War there were five hundred men in the public services. The people were intolerant of a Tory, and old Peter Wetmore, who chopped wood, was a suspect.
A different heart had young Peter, the orphan boy, who was for a time compelled to live with him or to become roofless.
The Lexington alarm thrilled him, as he heard the news on Lebanon green.
He caught the spirit of the people, and as for Governor Trumbull, he thought he was the “Lord” or almost a divinity. The Governor probably used to give him rides when he met him in the way. The Governor did not “whip behind.”
When Peter had heard the news of the Lexington alarm, he said:
“I must fly home now and tell uncle that.”