orning at sunrise, Israel swung his knapsack, shouldered his musket,
and, with Patterson's regiment, was on the march, quickstep, towards
Boston.

Like Putnam, Israel received the stirring tidings at the plough. But
although not less willing than Putnam to fly to battle at an instant's
notice, yet--only half an acre of the field remaining to be finished--he
whipped up his team and finished it. Before hastening to one duty, he
would not leave a prior one undone; and ere helping to whip the British,
for a little practice' sake, he applied the gad to his oxen. From the
field of the farmer, he rushed to that of the soldier, mingling his
blood with his sweat. While we revel in broadcloth, let us not forget
what we owe to linsey-woolsey.

With other detachments from various quarters, Israel's regiment remained
encamped for several days in the vicinity of Charlestown. On the
seventeenth of June, one thousand Americans, including the regiment of
Patterson, were set about fortifying Bunker's Hill. Working all through
the night, by dawn of the following day, the redoubt was thrown up. But
every one knows all about the battle. Suffice it, that Israel was one
of those marksmen whom Putnam harangued as touching the enemy's eyes.
Forbearing as he was with his oppressive father and unfaithful love, and
mild as he was on the farm, Israel was not the same at Bunker Hill.
Putnam had enjoined the men to aim at the officers; so Israel aimed
between the golden epaulettes, as, in the wilderness, he had aimed
between the branching antlers. With dogged disdain of their foes, the
English grenadiers marched up the hill with sullen slowness; thus
furnishing still surer aims to the muskets which bristled on the
redoubt. Modest Israel was used to aver, that considering his practice
in the woods, he could hardly be regarded as an inexperienced marksman;
hinting, that every shot which the epauletted grenadiers received from
his rifle, would, upon a different occasion, have procured him a
deerskin. And like stricken deers the English, rashly brave as they
were, fled from the opening fire. But the marksman's ammunition was
expended; a hand-to-hand encounter ensued. Not one American musket in
twenty had a bayonet to it. So, wielding the stock right and left, the
terrible farmers, with hats and coats off, fought their way among the
furred grenadiers, knocking them right and left, as seal-hunters on the
beach knock down with their clubs the Shetland seal