ded floor.

Meanwhile, Joe Devins had ears for all the sounds that penetrated
the kitchen from out of doors, and he had eyes for the slices of
well-browned pork and the golden hued Johnny-cake lying before the
glowing coals on the broad hearth.

As the little woman bent to take up the breakfast, Joe, intent on doing
some kindness for her in the way of saving treasures, asked, "Shan't I
help you, Mother Moulton?"

"I reckon I am not so old that I can't lift a mite of cornbread," she
replied with chilling severity.

"Oh, I didn't mean to lift THAT THING," he made haste to explain, "but
to carry off things and hide 'em away, as everybody else has been doing
half the night. I know a first-rate place up in the woods. Used to be a
honey tree, you know, and it's just as hollow as anything. Silver
spoons and things would be just as safe in it--" but Joe's words were
interrupted by unusual tumult on the street and he ran off to learn the
news, intending to return and get the breakfast that had been offered to
him.

Presently he rushed back to the house with cheeks aflame and eyes ablaze
with excitement. "They're a coming!" he cried. "They're in sight down by
the rocks. They see 'em marching, the men on the hill, do!"

"You don't mean that its really true that the soldiers are coming here,
RIGHT INTO OUR TOWN," cried Martha Moulton, rising in haste and bringing
together with rapid flourishes to right and to left, every fragment
of silver on the table. Uncle John strove to hold fast his individual
spoon, but she twitched it without ceremony out from his rheumatic old
fingers, and ran next to the parlor cupboard, wherein lay her movable
valuables.

"What in the world shall I do with them," she cried, returning with her
apron well filled with treasures, and borne down by the weight thereof.

"Give 'em to me," cried Joe. "Here's a basket, drop 'em in, and I'll run
like a brush-fire through the town and across the old bridge, and hide
'em as safe as a weasel's nap."

Joe's fingers were creamy; his mouth was half filled with Johnny-cake,
and his pocket on the right bulged to its utmost capacity with the same,
as he held forth the basket; but the little woman was afraid to trust
him, as she had been afraid to trust her neighbors.

"No! No!" she replied, to his repeated offers. "I know what I'll do.
You, Joe Devins, stay right where you are till I come back, and, don't
you ever LOOK out of the window."

"Dear, dear me!" she