. Two men and two boys went with the
gift. Good wife Elderkin was early on the highway. She wanted to make
certain just how many sheep bore the mark of Ebenezer Devotion's
ownership; but the driven sheep went past too quickly for her, and she
never had the satisfaction of finding out how many he gave. Following
the flock up the hill, she saw in the distance a sight that made her
heart beat fast. On the stone wall, under a great tree, sat Mary
Robbins, a little girl. She was dressed in a pink calico frock, and
she was holding in her arms a snow-white lamb, around whose neck she
had tied a strip of the calico of which her own gown was fashioned.

"Now if I ever saw the beat of that!" cried Good wife Elderkin,
walking almost at a run up the hill, and so coming to the place where
the child sat, before the sheep got there.

"Mary Robbins!" she cried, breathless from her haste. "What have you
got that lamb for?"

Mary blushed under her little sun-bonnet, hugged the lamb, and said
not a word. At the moment up came the flock, panting and warm. Down
sprang Mary Robbins from the wall, the lamb in her arms. Johnny
Manning, aged fifteen years, was one of the two lads in care of the
sheep. To him Mary ran, saying:

"Johnny, Johnny, won't you take my lamb, too?"

"What for?"

"Why, for some poor little girl in the town where there isn't anything
to eat," urged Mary, her sun-bonnet falling unheeded into the dust, as
she held up her offering to the cause of liberty.

"Why, it can't walk to Boston," said the boy, running back to recover
a stray sheep.

"You can carry it in your arms," she urged.

"Give it to me, then."

She gave it, saying:

"Be good to it, Johnny, and give him some milk to drink to-night. It
don't eat much grass, yet."

And so Johnny Manning marched away, over and down and out of sight,
with Mary's lamb in his arms. As for Mary herself, little woman that
she was, having made her sacrifice, she would have dropped on the
grass, after picking up her sun-bonnet, and had a good cry over her
loss, had it not been for Goodwife Elderkin standing there in the
road, waiting for her.

With a sharp look at the child, the woman left the highway to go to
her own house, and Mary went home, hoping that no one would ask her
about the lamb.

The flock of sheep marched until the noontide, when a halt was
ordered. After that they went onward over hill and river, with rest at
night and at noon, until the town of Roxbury