If there was anybody on earth Enoch loved it was his mother. All her surroundings bore evidence to that fact. Enoch was a sailor--he had made a good many trips along the coast in little trading vessels--but when he was at home he was not idle. His mother had enough from the earnings of her husband to support her in as good a style as she cared to live; the raiment of herself and son was neat and comely, but that did not prevent her from sticking close to the New England maxim: "Those who do not work should not eat." She had plainly brought Enoch up with the same ideas, for when he was ashore he was always at work at something. Mrs. Crosby did not go out to listen to the news the messenger had to bring, but Enoch went, and the face he brought back with him excited his mother's alarm at once. Like her son she had been waiting for this day, but she little dreamed that it would come so soon. "What is it, boy?" she asked, dropping her knitting into her lap. "That man's horse seems to be near tired out. Has he come far?" "He came from out west somewhere," said Enoch, dropping into the nearest chair. "But I don't know whether he came from Lexington or not." "What should be going on at Lexington?" asked Mrs. Crosby; although something told her that the news the messenger brought was worse than any she had heard yet. "They have had a fight out there," said Enoch, resting his head on his hands. "King George can make up his mind to one thing, and that is, he had better keep his men at home. The provincials whipped them because they destroyed property that did not belong to them." "And they did have a fight sure enough?" said his mother. "They had such a fight as they used to have with the Indians. They killed almost three hundred of them." Mrs. Crosby settled back in her chair and looked at Enoch without speaking. CHAPTER II. ENOCH'S HOME. "Enoch," said his mother, rising from her chair after a moment's pause and leading the way toward the kitchen, "breakfast is ready and waiting. While you are eating it I shall be pleased to hear something more about this fight. It looks to me now as though we had got to do battle with the King." "That is the way it looks to me, too," said the boy. The Crosby house would have been an object worth seeing if it had stood in this century. It was a double house built of logs, the places where they met being chinked with clay and the roof was thatched with long grass or rye straw. The windows consisted of small lead frames set with diamond plates of glass hung so that they opened inward instead of outward. As the building stood facing the south the "sun shone squarely in at noon," and gave warning that the dinner hour was approaching.