ilk stockings and red
morocco slippers. Mr. Quincy made a statement which stuck like a bur
in Jack Irons' memory of that day and perhaps all the faster because he
did not quite understand it. The speaker said: "The dragon's teeth
have been sown."

The chairman asked if there was any citizen present who had been on the
scene at or about the time of the shooting. Solomon Binkus arose and
held up his hand and was asked to go to the minister's room and confer
with the committee.

Mr. John Adams called at the inn that evening and announced that he was
to defend Captain Preston and would require the help of Jack and
Solomon as witnesses. For that reason they were detained some days in
Boston and released finally on the promise to return when their
services were required.

They left Boston by stage and one evening in early April, traveling
afoot, they saw the familiar boneheads around the pasture lands above
Albany where the farmers had crowned their fence stakes with the
skeleton heads of deer, moose, sheep and cattle in which birds had the
habit of building their nests. It had been thawing for days, but the
night had fallen clear and cold. They had stopped at the house of a
settler some miles northeast of Albany to get a sled load of Solomon's
pelts which had been stretched and hung there. Weary of the brittle
snow, they took to the river a mile or so above the little city,
Solomon hauling his sled. Jack had put on the new skates which he had
bought in Bennington where they had gone for a visit with old friends.
They were out on the clear ice, far from either shore, when they heard
an alarming peal of "river thunder"--a name which Binkus applied to a
curious phenomenon often accompanied by great danger to those on the
rotted roof of the Hudson. The hidden water had been swelling.

Suddenly it had made a rip in the great ice vault a mile long with a
noise like the explosion of a barrel of powder. The rip ran north and
south about mid-stream. They were on the west sheet and felt it waver
and subside till it had found a bearing on the river surface.

"We must git off o' here quick," said Binkus. "She's goin' to break
up."

"Let me have the sled and as soon as I get going, you hop on," said
Jack.

The boy began skating straight toward the shore, drawing the sled and
its load, Solomon kicking out behind with his spiked boots until they
were well under way. They heard the east sheet breaking up before they
h