THE LIFTED LATCH
An old house on the Connecticut way to Boston stood high on the windy hill. I have ridden past it at night when the dark savins lifted their conical forms on the hillside by the decrepit orchards and the clouds scudded over the moon. It had two chimneys that seemed to stand against the sky, and I saw it once at night when one of those chimneys was on fire, which caused my simple heart to beat fast in those uneventful days. I had heard say that the minutemen stopped there on their march from Worcester to Bunker Hill and were fed with bread from out of the great brick oven.
My father told me another thing which greatly awakened my curiosity. When the minutemen stopped there on their march to meet the “regulars,” they were in need of lead for bullets. They carried with them molds in which to make bullets, but they could not obtain the lead.
The good woman of the house was named Overfield, Farmer Overfield’s wife. She was called Mis’ Overfield. She had one daughter, a lithe, diminutive, beautiful girl, with large blue eyes and lips winsome and red, of such singular beauty that one’s eyes could hardly be diverted from following her. When she had anything to say in company, there was silence. She was the “prettiest girl in all the country around,” people used to say. And she was as good in these early days as she was pretty.
Her name was Annie—“sweet Annie Overfield” some people named her.
When she saw that the minutemen were perplexed about lead, she left her baking, wiped the meal from her nose that had been itching as a sign “that company was coming,” and, waving her white apron, approached the captain and said:
“Captain, I could tell you where there is lead if I had a mind to. But what would father say if I should? And my grandfather and grandmother, who are in their graves—they might rise up and shake the valances o’ nights, and that would be scary, O Captain!”
Annie’s father came stalking in in a blue blouse, a New England guard, ready for any duty.
“Father, I know where there is lead. May I tell?”
“Yes, girl, and the men shall have it wherever it be. Where is it, Annie? I have no lead, else I would have given it up at once.”