"Now you are talking foolishly," Hardy cried, angrily. "If I didn't know you two fellows as well as I do, I'd say you were ready to make friends with the oppressors."
"We have no desire to be friendly with the soldiers," Amos replied, thoughtfully, "nor can I understand why we should announce ourselves as their enemies. They have done nothing to us personally; but are simply stationed here in obedience to the King's commands."
"Oh, they have done nothing to us, eh?" the barber's apprentice cried, as if in a fury. "You stand here and say that, after what has happened this afternoon?"
"Well, what has happened?" and Jim caught the excited barber by the coat collar, shaking him vigorously, as if he believed by such energetic measures he might be restored to his scanty senses.
"Come down under the Liberty Tree and you'll find out all about it. I tell you that this sort of thing can't go on much longer. We'll rise in our might, as Attucks says; that's what we'll do, and I'll help in the rising!"
"Instead of continuing such ridiculous threats as you have been making since the funeral, suppose you tell us what happened this afternoon to put you in such a state of excitement. Has some other Britisher refused to pay your master's bill?"
"This is a matter which the people of Boston must take up, and that's exactly what they will do?" Hardy cried, stammering in his eagerness to relate the exciting news. "This forenoon one of the 'bloody backs' was down by your father's ropewalk,[D] and got into a little trouble with one of the workmen. Nothing would do but that they must fight it out, and the redcoat got a beating."
"Well?" Amos asked, placidly, as Hardy paused for breath.
"Well, and what does the Britisher do, but walk straight up to Murray's Barracks,[E] get a crowd of his chums, and go back to Gray's place, where they pounded five or six of the rope-makers almost to death. While you fellows have been sitting here idle, people who have more love for their country are gathering under the Liberty Tree, and if you go there now you'll hear what is to be done."
Jim looked at Amos as if to ask whether he believed all the barber's apprentice had told them, and the latter replied by an incredulous shake of the head, as he said: