“If I had,” spoke Ezra, “is it a thing you would have believed?”
Nat reflected and then shook his head.
“It is more than likely not,” he replied.
As the brothers turned to each other once more and began to speak low and earnestly together, Nat looked expectantly along the road to where he had seen the figures ahead. They were now coming anxiously toward him, and with delight he recognized Paul Revere and Ben Cooper. Advancing to meet them, he gripped their hands warmly.
“Hot work back there,” said Revere, nodding his head in the direction of Lexington.
“You succeeded in arousing the towns, I see,” spoke Nat.
“Thanks to your message to Dr. Warren—yes. But I almost made a failure of it at the very start; for I had not gone far on the road through Charlestown, when two British officers, who seemed to be patroling the road, popped out upon me. But Deacon Larkin’s horse was a good one, and I escaped, going through Medford and alarming almost every house on the way to Lexington. At Clark’s, where you and I went together a few days ago, I roused Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams; and while they were getting ready to leave, William Dawes, who was also sent out to spread the alarm, arrived. He and I set off to Concord to continue our work, and on the road met a young man named Prescott who agreed to give us his help.
“A little farther along here,” and Revere pointed up the road, “the other two stopped at a house to awake a man; but I rode on, and I had scarcely gone two hundred yards when I ran suddenly into a nest of British officers who clapped pistols to my head and bid me stop.”
“And you did?” laughed Ben Cooper.
“Can you doubt it?” asked Revere. “But let me go on. They took down some bars and led me into a pasture; there they threatened me with pistols once more and demanded to know who I was and upon what errand I was riding.”