"Yes, dear heart, but you cannot carry a rifle."
"But I can make bullets and bandages."
"The British fire at women; you must go!" I said, aloud.
"I will not go."
"I command."
"No." She bent her fair, childish head and the tears fell on the cloth in her lap.
"Look! Look at the redcoats!" called out the Minute Man at the attic window.
As I rose I heard plainly the long, resounding crash of musket firing, and the rattle of rifles followed like a hundred echoes.
"Look yonder!" he cried.
Suddenly the Concord Road was choked with scarlet-clad soldiers. Mapped out below us the country stretched, and over it, like a blood-red monster worm, wound the British column—nay, like to a dragon it came on, with flanking lines thrust out east and west for its thin red wings, and head and tail wreathed with smoke.