icans, who even then did not run away, but joined themselves
to other minutemen now assembling, and again came in contact with their
foes at Concord Bridge. Just how many were slain the first message did
not accurately report; but it was enough that blood had been shed, and
it mattered not whether that blood was from ten men or a thousand.

The die was cast, the moment for armed resistance had arrived, and
Israel Putnam tarried not for details, but sped straight for the home of
Governor Trumbull, at Lebanon (the same who was afterward known as
"Brother Jonathan"), and receiving from him mandatory permission to
proceed to the scene of strife, hastened back to Brooklyn, arriving at
his tavern home late in the afternoon. He had already been in the saddle
for hours, as the news reached him between eight and nine in the
morning, but before sunset the tireless warrior was again on horseback
and galloping for Cambridge and Concord. He probably had received
refreshment, food and drink at intervals, but he had not stopped to
change his working clothes for better, and went off on both long rides
in the farmer's frock which he wore when plowing in the field behind his
house.

Though the Putnam mansion at Brooklyn Green is no longer in existence,
the great trees that stood in front of it in his time still cast their
grateful shade upon its site, and the walled field, sloping toward a
verdant meadow, may be seen by the visitor, much as it lay to the sun on
that lovely morning in April, 1775, when the farmer-patriot was
peacefully running his furrows.

The distance to Cambridge was nearly ninety miles, yet Putnam covered it
in an all-night's ride, going pretty much over the same ground he had
traversed when, a young man of twenty-two, he had taken his wife and
child to their new home in Connecticut. Thirty-five years had elapsed
since the young pioneer had made his first venture in the world, ten of
which he had passed in fighting for the King against whose soldiers he
was soon to lead his fellow countrymen in war. Trained to fight the
battles of Britain, yet those ten years of experience in warfare with
the Indians were to prepare him for a wider, vaster field. He must now
have felt this, his patriot friends must have believed it, for their
eyes were turned expectantly toward Israel Putnam, as soon as the first
blood was shed at Lexington and Concord.

See that sturdy figure, hurrying on horseback over the rough roads,
through t