e encamped upon the Common. Boston was now a garrisoned
and fortified town; for the general had built a battery across the neck,
on the road to Roxbury, and placed guards for its defence. Every thing
looked as if a civil war were close at hand."

"Did the people make ready to fight?" asked Charley.

"A continental Congress assembled at Philadelphia," said Grandfather, "and
proposed such measures as they thought most conducive to the public good.
A provincial Congress was likewise chosen in Massachusetts. They exhorted
the people to arm and discipline themselves. A great number of minute men
were enrolled. The Americans called them minute men, because they engaged
to be ready to fight at a minute's warning. The English officers laughed,
and said that the name was a very proper one, because the minute men would
run away the the minute they saw the enemy. Whether they would fight or
run, was soon to be proved."

Grandfather told the children, that the first open resistance offered to
the British troops, in the province of Massachusetts was at Salem. Colonel
Timothy Pickering, with thirty or forty militia men, prevented the English
colonel, Leslie, with four times as many regular soldiers, from taking
possession of some military stores. No blood was shed on this occasion;
but, soon afterward, it began to flow.

General Gage sent eight hundred soldiers to Concord, about eighteen miles
from Boston, to destroy some ammunition and provisions which the colonists
had collected there. They set out on their march in the evening of the
18th of April, 1775. The next morning, the General sent Lord Percy, with
nine hundred men, to strengthen the troops which had gone before. All that
day, the inhabitants of Boston heard various rumors. Some said, that the
British were making great slaughter among our countrymen. Others affirmed
that every man had turned out with his musket, and that not a single
soldier would ever get back to Boston.

"It was after sunset," continued Grandfather, "when the troops, who had
marched forth so proudly, were seen entering Charlestown. They were
covered with dust, and so hot and weary that their tongues hung out of
their mouths. Many of them were faint with wounds. They had not all
returned. Nearly three hundred were strewn, dead or dying, along the road
from Concord. The yeomanry had risen upon the invaders, and driven them
back."

"Was this the battle of Lexington?" asked Charley.

"Yes," replied Gra