These three men walked together in front, followed by Minute Men and militia in double file, training arms. They went down the hillock, entered the by-road, came to its angle with the main road and there turned into the causeway that led straight to the bridge. The British began to take up the planks; to prevent it the Americans quickened their step. At this the British fired one or two shots up the river; then another, by which Luther Blanchard and Jonas Brown were wounded. A volley followed, and Isaac Davis and Abner Hosmer fell dead. Three hours before, Davis had bid his wife farewell. That afternoon he was carried home and laid in her bedroom. His countenance was pleasant in death. The bodies of two others of his company, who were slain that day, were brought to her house, and the three were followed to the village graveyard by a concourse of neighbors from miles around. Heaven gave her length of days in the land which his self-devotion assisted to redeem. She lived to see her country reach the Gulf of Mexico and the Pacific; when it was grown great in numbers, wealth and power, the United States in Congress bethought themselves to pay honors to her husband's martyrdom and comfort her under the double burden of sorrow and of more than ninety years. As the British fired, Emerson, who was looking on from an upper window in his house near the bridge, was for one moment uneasy lest the fire should not be returned. It was only for a moment; Buttrick, leaping in the air and at the same time partially turning around, cried aloud: "Fire, fellow soldiers! for God's sake, fire!" and the cry "fire! fire! fire!" ran from lip to lip. Two of the British fell, several were wounded, and in two minutes all was hushed. The British retreated in disorder toward their main body; the countrymen were left in possession of the bridge. This is the world renowned "Battle of Concord," more eventful than Agincourt or Blenheim. The Americans stood astonished at what they had done. They made no pursuit and did no further harm, except that one wounded soldier, attempting to arise if to escape, was struck on the head by a young man with a hatchet. The party at Barrett's might have been cut off, but was not molested. As the Sudbury company, commanded by the brave Nixon, passed near the South Bridge, Josiah Haynes, then eighty years of age, deacon of the Sudbury Church, urged an attack on the British party stationed there; his advice was rejected by his fellow soldiers as premature, but the company in which he served proved among the most alert during the rest of the day.