"Mother, will you please lend me two dollars of my money?"
Ordinarily, Mrs. Rafferty would have said no. But she was a very bright woman, and was so pleased with this evidence that Patsy had inherited some of her own wit, that she could not find it in her heart to refuse him.
"There's two dollars, and I suppose when you come back it'll be four," said she, remembering how money breeds money.
"Yes—four o'clock," said Patsy, as he ran out of the door and made for his friend the pawnbroker's, who sold him an old musket, with which, in a few minutes, Patsy joined the volunteers.
Ned Rogers had not been able to find any fire-arm; but when he learned where Patsy got his musket, and that the pawnbroker had a mate to it, he ran off to his aunt's house at his best speed, and entering unceremoniously, exclaimed:
"Aunty, I want two dollars quicker than lightning!"
"Edmund Burton! how you frighten me," said his Aunt Mercy. "Jane, get my pocket-book from the right-hand corner of my top bureau-drawer, and throw it downstairs right away."
The instant the pocket-book struck the floor, Ned snatched two dollars out of it and was off like a shot.
"Sweet, benevolent boy!" said Aunt Mercy. "I've no doubt he's hastening to relieve some peculiar and urgent case of distress he has discovered among the poor and sorrowful."
As it was rather late when Ned arrived at the church with his weapon, and the keg of powder was in its last quarter, he thought he'd make up for lost time. So he slipped in three bullets, instead of one, with his first load, and in his excitement rammed them so hard as almost to weld them together.