Mrs. Elderkin laughed again. "I'll say half a dozen then, if a dozen is all you want to give yourself." Ebenezer Devotion drew from his wallet a slip of paper and headed his list of names with "Six sheep, from Goodwife Elderkin." "Thank you in the name of God Almighty and the country," he said, solemnly, as he jerked his pony's head from the grass and rode on. Mrs. Elderkin watched him as he wound along the pond-side and was lost to sight; then she, chuckling forth the words, "I knew well enough my sheep were safe," went back to the marsh after flag-root. When every neighbor feels it a duty to carry intelligence from the last speaker he has met to the next hearer he may meet, news flies fast, so Goodwife Elderkin was prepared for the accost of Mr. Devotion. She did not linger long in the swamp, but, washing her hands free from mud in the water of the pond, walked swiftly home. By the time she reached her house, the gray pony and his rider were two miles away on the road to Canterbury. The cry of hunger and possible starvation in the town of Boston was spreading from village to village and from house to house. Do you know how Boston is situated? It would be an island but for the narrow neck of land on the south side. On the east, west and north are the waters of Massachusetts Bay and Charles River. Just north from it, and divided only by the same river, is another almost island, with its neck stretched toward the north; and this latter place is Charlestown and contains Bunker's Hill. Not far from the two towns, in the bay, are many islands. Noddle's Island, Hog, Snake, Deer, Apple, Bird and Spectacle Islands are of the number. On these islands were many sheep and cattle, likewise hay and wood, all of which the inhabitants of Boston needed for daily use, but by the Boston port bill, which went into operation on the first day of June, no person was permitted to land anything at either Boston or Charlestown; and so the neck of Charlestown reached out to the north for food and help, and the neck of Boston pleaded with the south for sustenance, and it was in answer to this cry that our nine men of Windham went sheep-gathering.