The regulars retired to the village, and, the divisions of troops having joined each other, they commenced a retreat which for several miles was a precipitous flight. Hayward fell mortally wounded at Lexington in a personal recontre with a British soldier. It was fatal to both, though Hayward survived several hours. With a religious patriotism he assured his father that the day's doings gave him no regret. Patriotism is one of the most exalted virtues. It is not, as some would have us believe, a mere excitement, or even a passion. It is high among the virtues which men in this state of existence may exhibit. Patriotism is not merely a barren attachment to the country in which we were born, nor is it that narrow yet holy feeling which leads us to look with affection upon the spot of our nativity,--upon the hills over which we have roamed in childhood and youth; but a large and noble view of the entire nation,--a regard for its institutions, social, moral, civil and religious, crowned by a manly spirit which leads its possessor to peril all in their defence. The patriot is devoted and self-sacrificing. Such were Davis, Hayward and Hosmer. Their names were comparatively humble, yet they were men of duty, men of religion, men of a liberal patriotism. Davis was about thirty years of age. He was both a husband and a father. He left his family that morning with a firm conviction that he should see them no more. If his lip quivered and his eye moistened as he trod his own freehold for the last time, fear had no part in those emotions. He had not accepted a command and trained his men for months without having anticipated the actual condition of war which was then immediately before him. Hayward and Hosmer were both sons of deacons in the church and were sent forth that morning upon an errand of death with the paternal blessing. Neither churches nor clergy were indifferent to the result. The clergy had counseled resistance. The people had imbibed with their religious opinions and sentiments a deep hatred of oppression. The three who fell were young men and well educated for the age in which they lived. They were of the yeomanry. They did not serve on that day upon compulsion nor for mercenary motives. They were the servants of the province; they were martyrs in the cause of freedom. "Their names mankind shall hold In deep remembrance, and their memory shall be A lasting monument, a sacred shrine Of those who died for righteousness and truth." Colonel Robinson was a native of the county of Essex, but then a citizen of Westford. In 1775 he was forty years of age, a veteran of the French War, and at the time of his death in 1805 he had been engaged in nineteen battles. Of his courage there was no doubt. Thaxter says of him, "a braver and more upright man I never knew." At Bunker Hill he served under Prescott, who pronounced him both honorable and brave.