Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an upper window. “Martha,” he 21 called, “you’d better come up. They’re close by, now.” To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was a little afraid; that is to say, he hadn’t quite courage enough to go down and, perhaps, encounter his own rheumatism and the king’s soldiers on the same stairway, and yet, he felt that he must defend Martha as well as he could.
The rap of a musket, quick and ringing, on the front door, startled the little woman from her apparent devotions. She did not move at the call of anything so profane. It was the custom of the time to have the front door divided into two parts, the lower half and the upper half. The former was closed and made fast, the upper could be swung open at will.
The soldier getting no reply, and doubtless thinking that the house was deserted, leaped over the chained lower half of the door.
At the clang of his bayonet against the brass trimmings, Martha Moulton groaned in spirit, for, if there was any one thing that she deemed essential to her comfort in this life, it was to keep spotless, speckless and in every way unharmed, the great knocker on her front door.
“Good, sound English metal, too,” she thought, “that an English soldier ought to know how to respect.”
As she heard the tramp of coming feet she only bent the closer over the Book of Prayer that lay open on her knee. Not one word did she read or see; she was inwardly trembling and outwardly 22 watching the well and the staircase. But now, above all other sounds, broke the noise of Uncle John’s staff thrashing the upper step of the staircase, and the shrill, tremulous cry of the old man, defiant, doing his utmost for the defense of his castle.
The fingers that lay beneath the book tingled with desire to box the old man’s ears, for the policy he was pursuing would be fatal to the treasure in garret and in well; but she was forced to silence and inactivity.
As the king’s troops, Major Pitcairn at their head, reached the open door and saw the old lady, they paused. What could they do but look, for a moment, at the unexpected sight that met their view: a placid old lady in black silk and dotted muslin, with all the sweet solemnity of morning devotion hovering about the tidy apartment and seeming to centre at the round stand by which she sat,—this pretty woman, with pink and white face surmounted with fleecy little curls and crinkles and wisps of floating whiteness, who looked up to meet their gaze with such innocent, prayer-suffused eyes.
“Good morning, Mother,” said Major Pitcairn, raising his hat.
“Good morning, gentlemen and soldiers,” returned Martha Moulton. “You will pardon my not meeting you at the door, when you see that I was occupied in rendering service to the Lord of all.” She reverently closed the book, laid it on 23 the table, and arose, with a stately bearing, to demand their wishes.