The Minute Men and militia formed on the usual parade, over which the congregation of the town for near a century and a half had passed to public worship, the freemen to every town meeting, and lately the patriot members of the Provincial Congress twice a day to their little senate house. Near that spot Winthrop, the father of Massachusetts, had given counsel; and Eliot, the apostle of the Indians, had spoken words of benignity and wisdom. The people of Concord, of whom about two hundred appeared in arms on that day, derived their energy from their sense of the divine power. The alarm company of the place rallied near the Liberty Pole on the hill, to the right of the Lexington road, in the front of the meeting house. They went to the perilous duties of the day "with seriousness and acknowledgment of God," as though they were to engage in acts of worship. The minute company of Lincoln, and a few men from Acton, pressed in at an early hour; but the British, as they approached, were seen to be four times as numerous as the Americans. The latter, therefore, retreated, first to an eminence eighty rods farther north, then across Concord River, by the North Bridge, till just beyond it, by a back road, they gained high ground about a mile from the center of the town. There they waited for aid. About seven o'clock, under brilliant sunshine, the British marched with rapid step into Concord, the light infantry along the hills and the grenadiers in the lower road. At daybreak the Minute Men of Acton crowded at the drum-beat to the house of Isaac Davis, their captain, who "made haste to be ready." Just thirty years old, the father of four little ones, stately in person, a man of few words, earnest even to solemnity, he parted from his wife, saying: "Take good care of the children," and while she gazed after him with resignation he led off his company. Between nine and ten the number of Americans on the rising ground above Concord Bridge had increased to more than four hundred. Of these, there were twenty-five men from Bedford, with Jonathan Wilson for their captain; others were from Westford, among them Thaxter, a preacher; others from Littleton, from Carlisle, and from Chelmsford. The Acton company came last and formed on the right; the whole was a gathering not so much of officers and soldiers as of brothers and equals, of whom every one was a man well known in his village, observed in the meeting houses on Sundays, familiar at town meetings and respected as a freeholder or a freeholder's son.