ames that day should
write with solemn deliberation.

Blue-Eyed Boy peeped again. "I hope they're almost done," he sighed;
"and I reckon they are, for Mr. Rodney has the pen now. My! how tired
and hot his face looks! I don't believe he has had any more dinner
to-day than I have, and I feel most awful empty. It's almost night by
this time, too."

At length the long list was complete. Every man then present had
signed the Declaration of Independence, except Mr. Dickinson of
Pennsylvania.

And now came the moment wherein the news should begin its journey
around the world. The Speaker, Mr. Thompson, arose and made the
announcement to the very men who already knew it.

Blue-Eyed Boy peeped with his ear and heard the words through the
key-hole.

With a shout and a cry of "Ring! ring!" and a clapping of hands, he
rushed upward to the belfry. The words, springing from his lips like
arrows, sped their way into the ears and hands of Bellman Grey.
Grasping the iron tongue of the old bell, backward and forward he
hurled it a hundred times, its loud voice proclaiming to all the
people that down in Independence Hall a new nation was born to the
earth that day.

When the members heard its tones swinging out the joyous notes they
marvelled, because no one had authorized the announcement. When the
key was turned from within, and the door opened, there stood the
mystery facing them, in the person of Blue-Eyed Boy.

"I told him to ring; I heard the news!" he shouted, and opened the
State House doors to let the Congress out and all the world in.

You know the rest; the acclamation of the multitude, the common peals
(they forgot to be careful of powder that night in the staid old
city), the big bonfires, and the illuminations that rang and roared
and boomed and burned from Delaware to Schuylkill.

In the waning light of the latest bonfire, up from the city of Penn,
rode our Blue-Eyed Boy--true to his purpose to be the first to carry
the glad news to General Washington.

"It will be like meeting an old friend," he thought; for had he not
seen the commander-in-chief every day going in and out of the Congress
Hall during his visit to Philadelphia only a month ago?

The self-appointed courier never deemed other evidence of the truth of
his news needful than his own "word of mouth." He rode a strong young
horse, which, early in the year, had been left in his care by a
southern officer when on his way to the camp at Cambridge; and