“How did it happen?” asked Don unsteadily.
“Job Williams, the Tory, led the mob,” replied the man. “And a mob it surely was. Such a lot of swearing and yelling—it’s good you missed it. Redcoats and Tories alike swarmed up the tree like so many thick-lipped gorillas. But it wasn’t all fine for them. Just before you came one of the soldiers in the topmost branches missed his hold and fell. I saw him fall; he was killed!”
“Good!” cried Jud, clenching his fists.
“That’s just what I said.” The man smiled. “They carted him off a few minutes ago. It was the hand of Providence that did it, my lads, and the hand of Providence will account for many more of them before long.”
“Let’s get out of here,” said Don. “It makes me sick to look. Just hear ’em yelling.”
Each boy picked up a twig from the street, and, thrusting it into his pocket, hurried up Newbury Street toward Hog Alley.
There was no fishing for Don or for Jud that day. What they had seen in the morning had taken away all their desire for sport. And Aunt Martha felt quite as bad about the destruction of the tree as the boys did. “If there’s one thing I can’t abide,” she said, “it’s spite work.”
The Liberty Tree yielded the soldiers fourteen cords of wood, but they had paid dearly for it. Other trees also were cut down for the sake of the wood, and before winter set in the Common had lost many of its fine old elms.
September passed, and with the turning of the leaves Don longed to go forth into the woods. “Say, Aunt Martha,” he remarked one day, “I never knew that the town was so small. There’s no place to go without seeing Redcoats. I’d like to go off somewhere in the woods.”
“Have patience, Donald. Maybe if you wait, some day the whole continent will be free for you to come and go in as you please.”