“Aye. Bad news for everyone who knew young Caleb,” answered Tom with a gulp. “He was a friend of mine.” “Hope they got enough powder up there on the Hill,” the Londonderry man went on. “Don’t seem as if they’re firing as lively as they should.” Tom looked again at the redoubt. Black smoke was pouring up the sky from over Charlestown way. The main force of the British was driving toward the little fortress, coming dangerously near. Now they passed the wooden fence. Now a handful of them began to swarm up a locust tree that stood in one corner of the earthen wall. “Great Jehovah!” gasped Hugh Watts. “They’re going in!” It was true. A last frantic burst of firing came from the redoubt, and then its guns were still. The British poured over the low walls in a triumphant scarlet wave. “No more powder. Or they’re all dead,” said Tom grimly. “Out, lads!” he heard Captain Moore calling behind him. “Spread over the field from Bunker Hill to the river and cover the retreat!” * * * * * Tramping back across Charlestown Neck in the sunset with the last straggling ranks of the Great American Army, Tom Trask slowly began to realize that he was not the same Tom Trask who had marched out so confidently to Bunker Hill. He had seen and heard too much that afternoon to remain the same. He had seen the King’s troops firing at him, and he had fired back, and he wanted no more of England and the King. When the bells began to ring in Newburyport last April and he heard the news of Concord Fight, he had gone to camp because all the other men were going. Only a cripple or a coward would stay at home. But he hadn’t thought much about it, much about why there had been this Concord Fight. He’d learned a little more from the talk around the campfire at Winter Hill, but nobody seemed to be sure whether they were fighting to make the King treat them better, or to get the country away from the King. Well, for himself, he was sure now. He knew when he heard John Stark say, “I mean to live free or die.” For that was the way he meant to live. He knew it for sure when he heard the news that Caleb had been shot. And he had good hopes that the time would come when he could live that way. Hadn’t he seen the British Army turn and run--turn and run away twice? “We’ll fight them from now till Judgment,” he muttered to himself. “But we’re going to be free.” A little group of his dusty, tattered fellows came toiling up and overtook him where he plodded along, trailing the empty blunderbuss. One of them hailed him, and he saw that it was Johnny Pettengall. “Hey, Tom! We almost licked ’em, didn’t we?” he called. “If our powder’d lasted one more time.... Where was you?” “At the rail fence and along the wall,” said Tom. “I was in the redoubt.” “We got slaughtered there,” said Tom.