“A youth,” says Hawthorne, “in the service of the clergyman [Parson Emerson], happened to be chopping wood, that April morning, at the back door of the Manse; and when the noise of battle rang from side to side of the Bridge, he left his task and hurried to the battle-field, with the axe still in his hand. The British had by this time retreated, the Americans were in pursuit; and the late scene of strife was thus deserted by both parties. Two soldiers lay on the ground--one was a corpse--but, as the young New Englander drew nigh, the other Briton raised himself painfully upon his hands and knees, and gave a ghastly stare in his face. The boy--it must have been a nervous impulse, without purpose--uplifted his axe, and dealt the wounded soldier a fierce and fatal blow upon the head.” To a certain extent, Bancroft, in his account of the fight, confirms this tale, saying: “The Americans acted from impulse, and stood astonished at what they had done. They made no (immediate) pursuit, and did no further harm,--except that one wounded soldier, rising as if to escape, was struck on the head by a young man with a hatchet. The party at Col. Barrett’s might have been cut off, but was not molested.” It is traditional that when this party, which had been sent to destroy the military stores at Colonel James Barrett’s, two miles to the westward, came back to the Bridge, alarmed by the firing, and saw their countrymen lying dead there, one of them with his head laid open, they were struck with fear and ran on to the main body in the village, telling of what they had seen. And it was this single incident, very likely, which led the English officers, and Lord Percy himself, to report “that the rebels scalped and cut off the ears of some of the wounded who fell into their hands.” Bancroft indignantly denies this, saying, “The falsehood brings dishonor on its voucher; the people whom Percy reviled were among the mildest and most compassionate of their race,”--which is true. It is no wonder that the British troops on [Illustration: REVOLUTIONARY INN.]