Tom sat down on the grass with his back against a poplar tree and looked up at the stars. They were just as bright as they had been when he crossed Breed’s Hill a few nights ago. He wondered if tomorrow he’d be going back there, lugging Kitty’s old blunderbuss with him. Suddenly he realized that he was sleepy. The tension had eased out of him, even though there was still thunder in the air, the thunder of war about to break. A man could only keep himself keyed up for so long. But it wouldn’t do—now—to go—to sleep. He ought to get up and walk—get—up—and—walk—
He opened his eyes and shook himself. How did it get to be like that—early morning, the light as broad as day? The sky was red and golden over eastward where the sea must lie. The grass around him was wet with dew. Smoke was curling upward from the chimneys round about, and in somebody’s barnyard he could hear a rooster crow. Lord forgive him, he’d slept all night. They’d drum him out of camp or at least give him forty lashes, and he deserved it, too.
He stood up just as a horse and rider came spurring to the gate. The rider dismounted hastily and approached the front door. He was a trim, neat man with fair hair, but he looked feverish and ill. Almost immediately a pint-sized man came out to let him in. The two shook hands.
“Ah, Elbridge, Elbridge Gerry, my good friend,” murmured the newcomer. “It is folly to try to seize and hold Charlestown. Yet, I must go.”
“Ah no, Dr. Warren,” pleaded the smaller man. “You are too well known. You stayed in Boston too long, and the British know too well what a great pillar of strength you have been to our colonial cause. As surely as you go up Bunker Hill, you will be slain.”
“I know,” answered the doctor tensely. “I told the friends with whom I dined last night that I would go up the Hill today and never come off again. I slept wretchedly, and my head aches, but after an hour or two—”
“Sirs,” interrupted Tom politely, “I am sorry to bother you when you’re about such weighty business, but I been here since six o’clock last night, trying to get some lead for Colonel Stark.”
Elbridge Gerry gave a snort of impatience, but Dr. Warren turned and smiled at the boy.
“I am sorry you had the long delay, lad. I myself saw that the lead was dispatched to Stark late yesterday afternoon. He’ll know what to do with it, if anybody does. His men will have melted it into bullets by now, and may be shooting it at the British, for all I know.”
He turned again to Mr. Gerry. “Ah, sir, ‘Dulce decorum,’ as all men know or must learn. Let us go inside, and send someone to lead my horse away, for he is as spent as I.”