"Take us with you," said a thousand Royalists of the town; and he took
them, bag and baggage, to wander up and down the earth.
Over on Bunker Breed's Hill wooden sentinels did duty when the British
soldiers left and for full two hours after; and then two brave
Yankees guessed the men were wooden, and marched in to take
possession just nine months from the day they bade it good-by, because
they had no powder with which to "tune" their guns.
Over on Cambridge Common marched, impatient as ever, General Putnam,
with his four thousand followers, ready to cross the River Charles and
walk once more the city streets of the good old town. On all the hills
were gathered men, women and children to see the British troops
depart.
Jeremy Jagger was up before the dawn on that sweetest of Sunday
mornings in March, and he reached the Roxbury lines just as General
Ward was ready to put his arms about Boston's Neck. The lad took his
place with the five hundred men and walked by Ensign Richards' side,
as he proudly bore the standard up to the gates, which Ebenezer
Learned "unbarred and opened." Once within the lines, Jeremy,
unmindful of the crow's feet strewn over the way, made haste through
lane and street to his old home on Beacon Hill. "Could that be his
mother looking out at him through the window-pane?" he thought, as he
drew near.
She saw him. She knew him. But what could it mean that she did not
open the door to let him in; that she waved him away? It could not be
that she, his own mother, had turned Tory, that her face was grown so
red and angry at the sight of her son.
Jeremy banged away at the door. There was no answer.
At last he heard the lifting of a sash, a head, muffled carefully,
appeared from the highest window in the house, and a voice (the lad
knew whose it was) said: "Go, Jeremy! Go away out of Boston as fast as
you can. I'll come to you as soon as it is safe."
"Why, mother, what's the matter?" cried the boy.
"Small pox! I've had it. Everybody has it. Go!"
"Good-by," cried Jeremy, running out of Boston as fast as any British
soldier of them all and a good deal more frightened. He burst into
Aunt Hannah's house with the news that he had been to Boston, that the
soldiers were all gone, that he had seen his mother, that she had the
small-pox and sent him off in a hurry.
"Tut! tut!" she cried. "It's wicked to tell lies, Jeremy Jagger."
"I'm not telling lies. Every word is true. Please give me something to
eat."
But Aunt Hannah did not wait to give the lad food, nor even to speak
the prayer of thanksgiving that went like incense from her heart. She
went into the barn-yard and threw corn on the barn-floor, to which the
hens and turkeys made haste. Closing the door, she summoned Jeremy to
kill the largest and best of them.
That Sunday afternoon the brick oven glowed with fervent heat, the
white, fat offerings went in, and the golden-brown turkeys and
chickens came out; and as each, in turn, was pronounced "done," Aunt
Hannah repeated the words: "Hungry! hungry! hungry! Hungry all
winter!"
The big clothes-basket was full of lint for wounds that now never
should be made. Gladly she tossed out the fluffy mass, and packed
within it every dainty the house contained.
It was nearly sunset when Aunt Hannah and Jeremy started forth, with
the basket between them, to Mr. Wooster's house, hoping that he would
carry it in his wagon up to Boston. He was not at home.
"Get out the cart," said Aunt Hannah to Jeremy, when they learned no
help was to be obtained. She sat by the roadside watching the basket
until the cart arrived.
"I'm going with you," she said, after the basket was in; she climbed
to the seat beside the lad, and off they started for Boston.
It was dark when they reached the lines, and no passes granted, the
officers said, to go in that night.
"But I've food for the hungry," said Aunt Hannah, in her sweetest
voice, from the darkness of the cart, "and folks are hungry in the
night as well as in the day."
She deftly threw aside the cover from the basket and took out a
chicken, which she held forth to the man, saying: "Take it. It's
good."
He hesitated a moment, then seized it eagerly.
"I know you," spoke up Jeremy, at this juncture. "You went up the Neck
with us this morning. I saw you."
"Then you are the boy who got first into Boston this morning, are you,
sir?"
"I believe I did, sir."
"Go on."
The oxen went on.
"Now, Jeremy, down with you and wait here for me. You haven't had
small-pox," said Aunt Hannah.
"But the oxen won't mind you," said Jeremy.
Aunt Hannah was troubled. She never had driven oxen.
At the moment who should appear but Mr. Wooster. He gladly offered to
take the basket and deliver it at Mrs. Jagger's door.
"Don't go in, mind! Mother's had small-pox," called Jeremy, as he
started.
"I'm tired," gasped Aunt Hannah, who had done baking enough for a
small army that day, as she sat down to rest on the broad seat of the
cart, and the two started for home. The soldier at the gate scarcely
heeded them as they went out, for roasted chicken "tasted so good."
"I'm so glad the British are out of Boston," said Aunt Hannah, as she
touched home soil again and went wearily up the walk to the little
dark house.
"And so am I," said Jeremy to the oxen, as he turned them in for the
night; "only if I'd had my way, they wouldn't have gone without one
good fair fight. You've done your duty, anyhow," he added, soothingly,
with a parting stroke to the honest laborer who went in last, "and you
deserve well of your country, too, for like Gen. Washington, you have
served without hope of reward. The thing I like best about the man is
that he don't work for money. I don't want my sixpence a day for
cutting willows; and--I won't--take it." And he didn't take it,
consoling himself with the reflection "that he would be like Gen.
Washington in one thing, anyhow."