PETER NIMBLE AND DENNIS IN THE ALARM-POST
Peter, after being entrusted with Dennis’s secret of the hidden
powder, walked about like one whose head was in the air. If he stuck
pumpkin-seeds into corn-hills, he did so with a machine-like motion.
He had listened to the singing of the birds in the cedars, but he
forgot the bird-singing now; though he loved rare wild flowers, a white
orchid bloomed among the wintergreens by the ferny brookside, but he
did not see it now; the sky, the forests, and everything seemed to have
vanished away.
He watched Dennis after their return as the latter came out of the
alarm-post over the way and went to the tavern or the war office.
Dennis for a time merely bowed to him and passed him by, day by day,
when on duty; and the corn grew, and the orioles flamed in the air.
But one thought held him――a picture of the light in the window in the
cedars, guarding some unknown cave that contained the lightnings and
the thunder of the battle-field. What would come of that service?
He at last felt that he must see Dennis. He could stand the suspense no
longer.
So one night he crept up to Dennis’s chamber under the rafters.
“I could stay away from you no longer, after what you told me,” said
he. “Strange things are going on――horsemen coming and going; queer
people haunt the Colchester road; knife-grinders, clock-cleaners, going
into the forest to get walnut-oil; men calling out ‘Old brass to mend’;
and I seem to see spies in them, and I fear for _him_.”
“Boy, I fear for him. He is an old man now, but he walks erect, and
seems to think that some host unseen is guarding him. He wears the
armor of faith. I can see it, other people do not; and he does not fear
the face of clay.”
“Dennis, when are you going to set me behind the window and the light
in the cedars, at night?”
“Soon, boy, soon. Let us look out of the window.”
It was a June night. Below them was the war office, the Alden Tavern,
the house of William Williams――the boy’s home. Afar stretched the
intervales, now full of fireflies and glowing with the silvery light of
the half-moon. Night-hawks made lively the still air, and the lonely
notes of the whippoorwills rang out from the cedars and savins in
nature’s own sad cadences. The roads were full of the odors of wild
roses and sweetbrier, but were silent.
“Dennis,” said Peter, “I have been thinking. Suppose I were to watch in
the cedars, and an unknown man were to come down the open road toward
the light in the window. And suppose I were to say, ‘Halt, and give
the countersign,’ and he were to have no countersign. Then I would say,
‘Follow me, but do not come near me, or I will discharge my duty upon
you.’ And suppose he were to follow, and I move back, back, back with
the window and light, and he were to think that I were a house, and
that I were to draw him into a trap and lose him, and put out the light
and run for you――what would you do then?”
“I would hunt for him in the ravine where you left him――in the wood
trap――and would find him, and wring from him the cause of his being on
the highway without a passport.”
“Dennis, do you think that such a thing as that will ever happen?”
“Yes; my instincts tell me that it will. Boy, there is one man whom
Washington trusts, whom the Governor relies upon, but in whom I can see
a false heart. He was born only a few miles from here. He is famous. If
he were to turn traitor to our cause, as I believe he will, he would
send spies to Lebanon. He would seek to destroy the hiding-places of
powder, and he knows where they are to be found. Then, boy, your time
to thwart such designs would come.”
“What is that man’s name?”
“I hardly dare to breathe it even to you, with a heart of truth.”
“I will never break your confidence. What is the name?”
“Benedict Arnold!”
It now began to be seen in the army that the Governor was in peril.
The Tories plotted a secret warfare against the leading patriots.
One day Governor Trumbull met the Council of Public Safety with the
alarming declaration:
“They have put a price upon my head.”
A reward had been secretly offered for his capture.
“I must have a guard,” he said, and a guard was granted him of four
sturdy, loyal men――a public guard, who examined all strangers who came
by day to Lebanon.
The plots of the Tories filled the country with alarm. One of these
plots was to assassinate Washington. Others were to abduct the royal
Governors.
These plotters tried to seize Governor Clinton of New York, and William
Livingston, the patriotic Governor of New Jersey. They did seize
General Stillman at Fairfield and carried him away as a prisoner.
Lebanon was exposed to such incursions from the sea. Spy boats were
on the waters, and these might land men on the highway to Lebanon and
seize the Governor and bear him away.
The biographer of Governor Trumbull (Stuart) thus relates an incident
that illustrates the perils to which the Governor was exposed:
“A traveler, in the garb of a mendicant――of exceedingly suspicious
appearance――came into his house one evening when he was unwell and had
retired to bed. The stranger, though denied the opportunity of seeing
him, yet insisted upon an interview so pertinaciously that at last the
Governor’s wary housekeeper――Mrs. Hyde――alarmed and disgusted at his
conduct, seized the shovel and tongs from the fireplace and drove him
out of the house. At the same time she called loudly for the guard; but
the intruder suddenly disappeared, and, though careful search was made,
eluded pursuit, and never appeared in that quarter again.”
One of the reasons that made Lebanon a perilous place and that invited
plots and spies was that magazines of powder from the West Indies were
thought to be hidden here, as well as at New London and along the
Connecticut main and river. Powder was the necessity of the war; to
explode a powder magazine was to retard the cause.
Lebanon was like a secret fortress to the cause. Prisoners of war
were sent to Governor Trumbull. It was thought that they could not
be rescued here. But their detention here by the wise, firm Governor
invited new plots. The thirteen colonies sent their State prisoners
here. Among these prisoners was the Tory son of Benjamin Franklin, a
disgrace to the great patriot, that led him to carry a heavy heart amid
all of his honors as the ambassador to the French court. Dr. Benjamin
Church, a classmate of Trumbull at college, was sent to him among these
prisoners.
Trumbull became universally hated by the Tories. They saw in him the
silent captain of the world’s movement for liberty. The condition
became so alarming that in November, 1779, Washington sent a message
to him to seize all Tories. “They are preying upon the vitals of the
country,” he said. The Continental Congress demanded of him to “arrest
every person that endangered the safety of the colony.” The condition
that became so alarming, then, was beginning now.
What a position was that that was held by this brave, clear-headed,
conscience-free man!
Strangers were coming and going; any one of them might have a cunning
plot against the Governor in his heart. The way to him was easy.
Express-wagons with provisions started from Lebanon; drivers of cattle
came there; people who had cases of casuistry; men desiring public
appointment in the army; peddlers, wayfarers, seamen, the captains of
privateers.
But he walked among them――amid these accumulating perils――as one who
had a “guard invisible.” He had. He knew that his own people were loyal
to him, that they believed him as one directed by the Supreme Power for
the supreme good, and that they loved him as a father.
Dennis guarded the good old man as though he had had a commission from
the skies to do so. He gave to him the strength of his great heart.
He caused a tower――“the alarm-post”――over his head, one secret room,
to protect him――“a room over the gate”――and the room must have seemed
to the man whose brain directed all like the outstretched wing of
a guardian divine. The Governor was an old man when the war began.
Born in 1710, he was at the time of the Declaration of Independence
sixty-six years old.
Dennis was like a guardian sent to him, and Peter like a messenger sent
to Dennis. There was something in the glances of each to the other
that was out of the common of life――it was the cause.
One day there was a shout in the alarm-post.
A man was riding up the Colchester road, dashing, as it were, as if his
own body and that of his horse were only agents of this thought. He was
an Irishman. When the Lexington alarm came, he had heard the clock of
liberty strike; his hour had come.
“A man is coming like mad, riding with the wind,” said the sentinel in
common terms.
The man came rushing up to the store, and drew his rein. The Governor
met him there.
“Knox, your Honor, Knox of the artillery. I was at Bunker Hill.”
“I know you by your good name,” said the Governor. “You know how to put
your shoulder to the wheel.”
Knox of the artillery smiled.
He had won the reputation of knowing how to put his shoulder to the
wheel in a queer way. There was a rivalry between the Northenders and
Southenders in Boston, and both parties celebrated Guy Fawkes’s day
with grotesque processions, in which were effigies of Guy Fawkes and
the devil. In an evening procession of the party to which young Knox
belonged on Guy Fawkes’s day the wheel of the wagon or float bearing an
effigy, possibly of Guy Fawkes, broke, and that the rival party might
not know it and ridicule his party, he said:
“I will put my shoulder to the wheel.”
He did this, and the float moved on, and the pride of his party was
saved.
Knox of the artillery had kept a bookstore in Boston. It was like the
New Corner Bookstore before the famous Old Corner Bookstore. When the
war broke out he was attached to the artillery. There was a great need
of powder, and he had a scent for it. He found it, he hid it; he was
the “powder-monkey” of the great campaigns.
Like Paul Revere, he caught the spirit of the minutemen. He could ride
for liberty! He was riding for liberty now!
“Washington recommended you to volunteer for the artillery service,”
said the Governor. “I could have no more favorable introduction to you.
You do not ride for nothing, my young friend. May I ask what brings you
here? Your horse foams.”
“There is no time to be lost in days like these,” said the young
artilleryman. “These are days of destiny, and we must make the success
of our cause sure. I went to Washington for permission to bring the
siege-guns and powder from Fort Ticonderoga to Boston. I have come to
you for a like reason. I am sure, in my soul, of ultimate victory; I
know it will come, but preparation is victory. Boston is evacuated, and
to defend New York we must protect the coast of Connecticut. I have
conferred with Washington, and I must have a word with you.”
“To the tavern with the horse,” said the Governor. “Into the store,
or war office, as I call my place here, we will go and shut the
weather-door, and I will answer ‘Go’ if any call. We will consider the
matter.”
They went into the store and the door was shut.
Without sighed the cedars in the April or May winds. It was the coming
of summer; the bright wings of southern birds were blooming in the air.
The cedars were dressing in green, and the elms flaming in the glowing
suns of the long days.
They talked, as we may fancy, of the sons of liberty, the siege of
Boston, and the outlook, and here young Knox gained strength to face
the strenuous campaigns of New York and the Jerseys, and to cause the
cannon of liberty to thunder as never before.
They talked of Rhode Island. Strange things were happening there.
Then the Committee of Safety came. And they considered the matter.
The Governor had a habit of saying, “Let us consider the matter”; after
a time he added, “and bring it before the council.”
He walked about like a visitor to the world. He was always “considering”
some matter.
He would stand before the church, considering; cross the green,
considering; the public men who came to visit him usually found him
considering.
Why had Knox come to Lebanon?
It was to talk of powder. How could saltpeter be found? Where could it
be stored?
There might be a powder magazine at New London, or near it, or in
covert in a place on the Connecticut, or right here among the rocky
caves of the hills. Where?
The Governor would “consider.” He did, and the secret hiding-places of
powder were known to few besides him. The Governor knew the guards of
the magazines. So Connecticut stored powder.
“Powder, powder, ye gods, send us powder!” cried General Putnam at the
battle of Bunker Hill.
[Illustration: The battle of Bunker Hill.]
There was a powder famine. The whole army needed powder.
One day the Governor sat before his door on the green, waiting the
return of Dennis. The latter came back from a commission which he had
executed quickly, and dropped from his horse on the green.
“You have made short time, Dennis.”
“Yes, Governor; I never think of myself, but only of the cause.”
“You may well say that, and I know it to be true. Such a spirit as that
in these testing times is invaluable. I have a new commission for you.”
“Let me have it. I will die for it; I am in for liberty now――head,
heart, and heels.”
He sunk down on the green.
“Let us consider,” the Governor said; “let us consider. You have heard
me speak of Salisbury, the hidden town in the northwest corner of the
State, on the Housatonic. The world knows little of that town, but
it hears much. There has been a foundry there since ’62. I am going
to make an arsenal there, and manufacture guns there, and make it a
powder-post. I must have post-riders who can lead teamsters and who can
be trusted, and move quickly, to go from Lebanon green to Salisbury
with my orders. No spot in America can be made more useful to our army
than this. I am going to appoint you as an officer for this business,
as a special messenger to Salisbury in the secret service.
“Dennis, no one can do so much as when he is doing many things. When I
am doing two things well, I can do three. I never undertake anything
that I can not do well, but experience enables us to do many things
well, as you are learning yourself, Dennis O’Hay.”
Dennis bowed.
Salisbury was a hidden place, but rich in nature. It was a place of
iron-mines, with limestone and granite at the foot of the mountains.
Here the United States began to cast cannon and gather saltpeter.
The works grew. Cannon-balls, bombs, shells, grape-shot, anchors,
hand-grenades, swivels, mess-pots and kettles, all implements of war
were made and stored here. The armaments of ships were furnished here
by skilled hands. Here the furnaces blazed night and day. Here the
ore-diggers, founders, molders, and guards were constantly at work.
There came here an army of teamsters for transportation. The Governor
wished one whom he could trust to bear his orders to this town hidden
among the mountains, and Dennis was such a man. Dennis could be spared,
as there was a regular guard at the alarm-post now, and the church
afforded it a shelter.
The reader who makes a pilgrimage to Lebanon to visit the “war office”
should note the old church and recall the habits of a stately past,
when men lived less for money-making and more for the things that live.
The solemn bell rings out as of old, but it is over the graves of
people who were the empire builders, but who knew it not except by
faith. The gray stones are crumbling where they lie. The engine-whistle
sounds afar, and Willimantic reflects the life of new times. Here New
England of old lives on――apart from the hurrying world of steam and
electricity.
The great cedars are gone, though cedar swamps are near. Night settles
down over all in silence, and one feels here that this is a lonely
world.
The lights have gone out in the old Alden Tavern, and the tavern itself
is gone, but nature here is beautiful among the hills, and to the
susceptible eye the hills are touched by the spirit of the patriots of
old.