Kitty sat up. A cannon ball was bouncing across the grassy yard of the house next door. It had passed through the garden and shattered the pointed roof of the well-house where they stood. She reached out and grasped Sally Rose by the shoulder. “Quick,” she gasped. “Let’s get inside. They’re firing into the town, not just at the earthworks any more.” Racing into the taproom, they found Gran in talk with a tall man who wore an officer’s coat and three-cornered hat and did not carry a pail. “Girls,” said Gran, her voice frighteningly calm, “the British have landed, and ’tis plain they mean to charge the Hill. Whether they can take it or not, we don’t know. But they’re shooting straight into Charlestown now, iron balls and iron cases full of burning trash. The town’ll soon be in flames over our heads. ’Tis time to leave. There’s nothing more we can do.” A moment later they were in the street outside, trailing along after a sorry-looking group of men and women, poor folk, mostly, who had stayed in town in spite of all the warnings of danger, because they had nowhere else to go. “I’m glad,” murmured Gran as they plodded over the cobblestones, their eyelids smarting and their throats choked with the thick smokiness that seemed to be flooding over the whole world, “I’m glad we sent Timothy to Cambridge, two days back--Timothy and that poor horse, too. At least, we’re leaving no living thing behind to burn.” Kitty thought of all the living things who were left to their fate in that tiny fortress on the Hill. Iron shot blasted the roofs about them, and balls of living flame burst in the street. All along their way the old wooden houses were beginning to catch fire. Just as they passed out of town and into the green country at the rear of Bunker Hill, Kitty looked back. Clouds of black smoke billowed upward from the docks, the warehouses, the dwellings, the shops in the market square. The church steeple lifted up one soaring pyramid of fire. Her eyes hurt suddenly with tears that did not come from the smoke. “Come away, child,” said Gran, putting her arm about the girl’s shoulders, using her other hand to guide the half-blinded Sally Rose. How far they had gone before the little procession came to a halt, she did not know, but she did know they toiled a long way down the dusty road, constantly shelled by the heavy guns of the ships. When they did stop, it was in the front dooryard of a little tavern, The Sign of the Sun. The raggle-taggle company scattered themselves about on the grass, but Gran led the girls inside. “They say the firing’s too heavy for us to cross the Neck and flee inland,” she explained, “but ’tis to this place they are bringing the wounded men. Perhaps we can help here.”