“I always heard,” said my grandfather, by way of changing the subject, “that they meant to have taken Mr. Adams and Mr. Hancock and hung 'em.” “Wal, to be sure they did,” said Sam Lawson. “I know all about that are. Sapphira Clark, up to Lexington, she told me all about that are, one day when I was to her house puttin' down her best parlor carpet. Sapphira wa'n't but ten or eleven years old when the war broke out; but she remembered all about it. Ye see, Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams was a-staying hid up at their house. Her father, Mr. Jonas Clark, was minister of Lexington; and he kep' 'em quite private, and didn't let nobody know they was there. Wal, Sapphira said they was all a-settin' at supper, when her father, he heard a great rapping at the front-door; and her father got up and went and opened it; and she looked after him into the entry, and could just see a man in a scarlet uniform standing at the door, and she heard him ask, 'Are Sam Adams and John Hancock here?' And her father answered, 'Oh, hush! Don't mention those names here.'--'Then,' says the man, 'I come to tell you the British troops will be along by sunrise; and, if they are in your house, they'd better escape right away.'” “That must have been Col. Paul Revere,” said Aunt Lois. “He went all through the country, from Boston to Concord, rousing up people, and telling 'em to be ready.” “Well, what did Mr. Adams and Hancock do?” “Wal, they got ready right away, and slipped quietly out the back-door, and made their way over to Burlington, and staid in the minister's house over there out of the way of the battle.” “What would the British have done with 'em, if they had caught them?” said I. “Hung 'em--high as Haman,” said my Aunt Lois sententiously. “That's what they'd have done. That's what they'd 'a' done to them, and to Gen. Washington, and lots more, if they'd had their way.” “Oh, yes!” said grandfather, “they were mighty high-stepping at first. They thought they had only to come over and show themselves, and they could walk through the land, and hang and burn and slay just whom they'd a mind to.” “Wal, they found 'twas like jumping into a hornets' nest,” said Sam Lawson. “They found that out at Lexington and Bunker Hill.” “Brother Con was in those trenches at Bunker Hill,” said grandfather. “There they dug away at the breastworks, with the bom'-shells firing round 'em. They didn't mind them more than if they'd been hickory-nuts. They kep' fellows ready to pour water on 'em as they fell.”