When the troops had marched away, the weary little woman laid aside her silken gown, resumed her homespun dress, and immediately began to think of getting Uncle John down-stairs again into his easy chair; but it required more aid than she could give, to lift the fallen man. At last, Joe Devins summoned returning neighbors, who came to the rescue, and the poor nubbins were left to the rats once more.
Joe climbed down the well and rescued the blue stocking, with its treasures unharmed, even to the precious watch, which watch was Martha Moulton’s chief treasure, and one of the very few in the town.
Martha Moulton was the heroine of the day. The house was besieged by admiring men and women that night and for two or three days thereafter; 37 but when, years later, she being older, and poorer, even to want, petitioned the General Court for a reward for the service she rendered in persuading Major Pitcairn to save the court-house from burning, there was granted to her only fifteen dollars, a poor little grant, it is true, but just enough to carry her story down the years, whereas, but for that, it might never have been wafted up and down the land, on the wings of this story.
A WINDHAM LAMB IN BOSTON TOWN.
It was one hundred and one years ago in this very month of June, that nine men of the old town of Windham—which lies near the northeast corner of Connecticut—met at the meeting-house door. There was no service that day; the doors were shut, and the bell in the steeple gave no sound.
The town of Windham had appointed the nine men a committee to ask the inhabitants to give from their flocks of sheep as many as they could for the hungry men and women of Boston. Each man of the committee was told at the meeting-house door the district in which he was to gather sheep.
On his stout grey pony sat Ebenezer Devotion. As soon as he heard the eastern portion of the town assigned to him, he gave the signal to his horse, and in five minutes was out of sight over the high hill. In ten minutes he was near the famous Frog pond. As he was passing it by, a voice from the marsh along its bank cried out:
“Where now, so fast, this fine morning, Mr. Devotion?”