After reposing a short time, they proceeded together to Concord, alarming the whole country as they went, by literally knocking at the door of almost every house upon the road. They had of course been in part anticipated by the signals on the North Church steeple, which had spread intelligence of the intended movement, with the speed of light, through all the neighboring towns. By the effect of these well-judged and well-executed measures, Hancock and Adams were enabled to provide in season for their personal safety, and the whole population of the towns, through which the British troops were to pass, were roused and on foot before they made their appearance. On reaching Lexington Green, they found a corps of militia under arms and prepared to meet them. At Concord, they found another; and when, after effecting as far as they could, the objects of their expedition, they turned their steps homeward, they were enveloped, as it were, in a cloud of the armed yeomanry, which thickened around them at every step, and did such fearful execution in their ranks, that nothing but their timely meeting with the reinforcements under Lord Percy, at West Cambridge, could have saved them from entire disorganization and actual surrender. Colonel Revere, many years afterward, drew up a very curious and interesting account of his adventures on this expedition, in the form of a letter to the corresponding secretary of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is printed in the Collections of that body, and is now familiar to the public. Warren who was now in attendance on the Committee of Safety at West Cambridge, expecting the British troops to pass that way on their return from Concord, awaited their arrival. On their approach he armed himself and went out in company with General Heath to meet them. On this occasion he displayed his usual fearlessness, by exposing his person very freely to the fire of the enemy; and a bullet passed so near his head, as to carry away one of the long, close, horizontal curls, which, agreeably to the fashion of the day, he wore above his ears. This accident was regarded by the superstitious as an ill-omen, or a presage of an early doom that awaited him. But Warren himself, even in a superstitious age, never yielded to such notions, his frank and generous spirit would rather sympathize with the gallant Trojan hero, who when he was advised to await, before he entered upon a battle, till the omens deduced from the flight of birds should become favorable, exclaimed, “What care I for the flight of birds, whether they take their course to the right or to the left? I ask no better omen than to draw my sword in the cause of my country.” It is a remarkable fact, on examining the composition of the New England army of 1775, how many names we find of men, either previously or subsequently illustrious in the history of the country.