At that moment, on glancing through the window, I was startled to see several buildings on fire away toward Boston. The rebels had evidently begun the work of destruction; but the thought that it had suddenly come to this, that our quiet, happy, and thriving country-side was to be devastated by fire and sword as during old wars of which I had read in history, made me, for a moment, wonder if it were not all a horrible dream. Recalling myself, however, to the situation in which I was placed, as the defender of my mother and sisters, I turned from the window, and, when a silence fell in the sobbing, said, 'I shall see Duncan Hale; he will help us.' The painful day wore slowly on. It was evident that the whole country was deeply stirred. Not a single soldier of the King could be seen, but rebels were everywhere. On horseback and on foot; in rough carriages and farm wagons; armed and unarmed; singly and in crowds; cheering, shouting, swearing, threatening--all day long these rough, leaderless, untrained farmer soldiers kept passing and re-passing, in what seemed to be wild, purposeless confusion. Now and then the sound of distant firing came from the direction of Boston; occasionally a column of smoke arose from the country round, telling its own story of destruction. I wondered if a similar fate awaited our fine old house, with its fluted Corinthian corners, and its air of English solidity. I recalled the peculiar pride with which my father had shown visitors through and around it. The big hallway running from front to back, and on either side the lofty square rooms; the high wainscotting, the deeply recessed window seats, and queer, old-fashioned mouldings that bordered the ceilings; the wide fire-places with their curiously-wrought andirons; the two magnificent lindens before the door, planted by my grandmother when a bride some sixty years ago; the wide garden with shaded walks, and the hundred acres of rich, valuable land, all took on a new interest to me that day. It came to me that these things could not be given up without a pang. The day--it was the twentieth of April, 1775--proved gloriously fine until the end; this, with the unusual gaiety of the birds in the lindens, the bursting of the buds in the gardens, and other assurances of spring, were in striking contrast with all that had been taking place in the world of men. But the consequences of the events that had preceded that day were to be infinitely greater than any contrast could be. I can see now, as I did not then, that rightly looked at, the skirmish at Lexington where my father fell, had within it the beginnings of two nations--and one of them was Canada. But of this, later in the story.