She turned the buttons, and, with a bit of trembling at her heart, such as she had not felt all day, she ventured up the stairs, bearing the steaming peace-offering before her. Uncle John was writhing under the sharp thorns and twinges of his old enemy, and in no frame of mind to receive any overtures in the shape of catnip tea; nevertheless, he was watching, as well as he was able, the motions of the enemy. As she drew near he cried out: "Look out this window, and see! Much GOOD all your scheming will do YOU!" She obeyed his command to look, and the sight she then saw caused her to let fall the cup of catnip tea and rush down the stairs, wringing her hands as she went and crying out: "Oh, dear! what shall I do? The house will burn and the box up garret. Everything's lost!" Major Pitcairn, at that moment, was on the green in front of her door, giving orders. Forgetting the dignified part she intended to play, forgetting everything but the supreme danger that was hovering in mid-air over her home--the old house wherein she had been born, and the only home she had ever known--she rushed out upon the green, amid the troops, and surrounded by cavalry, and made her way to Major Pitcairn. "The town-house is on fire!" she cried, laying her hand upon the commander's arm. He turned and looked at her. Major Pitcairn had recently learned that the task he had been set to do in the provincial towns that day was not an easy one; that, when hard pressed and trodden down, the despised rustics, in home-spun dress, could sting even English soldiers; and thus it happened that, when he felt the touch of Mother Moulton's plump little old fingers on his military sleeve, he was not in the pleasant humor that he had been, when the same hand had ministered to his hunger in the early morning. "Well, what of it? LET IT BURN! We won't hurt you, if you go in the house and stay there!" She turned and glanced up at the court-house. Already flames were issuing from it. "Go in the house and let it burn, INDEED!" thought she. "He knows me, don't he? Oh, sir! for the love of Heaven won't you stop it?" she said, entreatingly. "Run in the house, good mother. That is a wise woman," he advised. Down in her heart, and as the very outcome of lip and brain she wanted to say, "You needn't 'mother' me, you murderous rascal!" but, remembering everything that was at stake, she crushed her wrath and buttoned it in as closely as she had Uncle John behind the door in the morning, and again, with swift gentleness, laid her hand on his arm. He turned and looked at her. Vexed at her persistence, and extremely annoyed at intelligence that had just reached him from the North Bridge, he said, imperiously, "Get away! or you'll be trodden down by the horses!" "I CAN'T go!" she cried, clasping his arm, and fairly clinging to it in her frenzy of excitement. "Oh stop the fire, quick, quick! or my house will burn!"