"Yes," he replied; "they were Jonathan and Caleb Harrington. Caleb, and Joe Comer, who lived a mile from Lexington, had gone into the meeting-house to get some powder stored in the loft. They had taken it to the gallery when the British reached the meeting-house. They flew to the door, and started on a run for the company. Caleb was shot dead at the west end of the meeting-house, but Joe, though wounded, escaped. Jonathan had stood his ground with the rest. His house was near the meeting-house. He was in front of his own house when the regulars fired the third time. He was shot in the breast, and fell. His wife, Ruth, stood looking out of the window, with their only child, nine years old, by her side. She saw her husband fall, and ran out to help him. He raised up, stretched his arms toward her, fell again, and was dead before she could get to him. Oh, it was too cruel, too cruel!" "There were brave men in that little band of patriots," I remarked. "Brave men!" said the old man, his mild eyes beaming with unusual lustre, "braver men never lived. Not one of them left his post until Captain Parker, seeing it was useless to fight against so many regulars, told them to disperse. There was one man who wouldn't go even then. It was Jonas Parker of this town. He lived near Parson Clark's. He had said he would never run from an enemy, and he didn't. He had loaded his musket, put his hat, containing powder, wadding, and bullets, between his feet, and so faced the regulars. At the second fire he was wounded, and fell on his knees. Then he fired his gun; and, though he was dying, he reached for another charge in his hat, when a big red-coat killed him with a bayonet on the very spot where Jonas first stood. Wasn't that pluck?" "Rare pluck," I answered. "The names of such men should never be forgotten." "They never will be," replied the old patriot, excitedly. "Their names are all cut deep in marble on the little monument down yonder on the Green--Robert Munroe, Jonas Parker, Samuel Hadley, Jonathan Harrington, Jun., Isaac Muzzy, Caleb Harrington, John Brown, and Asahel Porter. Should the marble perish, their names are cut deeper in the memory of Americans." "You said it was a warm night when Paul Revere rode from Cambridge to Lexington," I said. "Yes," he replied; "it was a very early spring. Young leaves appeared on the 1st of April. The grass on the village green was so tall on the morning of the 19th that it waved in the light wind that was blowing. At noon that day, when the British were driven from Concord, the quicksilver was eighty-five degrees in the shade, and the door-yards were bright with dandelions. The minute-men made it hotter than that--full a hundred in the shade--for the British before they got back to Cambridge that evening." "Did you serve in the army afterward?" I inquired.