g them from the showcase, he glanced at
the pictures on the walls, printed from plates which Mr. Revere had
engraved.

The brooches were beautiful--ruby, onyx, sapphire, emerald, but after
examining them he turned once more to the beads.

"They are eighteen carats fine, and will not grow dim with use. I
think your sister will be delighted with them."

Robert thought so too, and felt a glow of pleasure when they were
packed in soft paper and transferred from the case to his pocket.

With the afternoon before him he strolled the streets, looking at
articles in the shop windows, at the clock on the Old Brick
Meetinghouse, the barracks of the soldiers,--the king's Twenty-Ninth
Regiment.[14] Some of the redcoats were polishing their gun barrels
and bayonets, others smoking their pipes. Beyond the barracks a little
distance he saw Mr. Gray's ropewalk. He turned through Mackerel Lane
and came to the Bunch of Grapes Tavern,[15] and just beyond it the
Admiral Vernon. He strolled to Long Wharf. The king's warship, Romney,
was riding at anchor near by, and a stately merchant ship was coming
up the harbor. The fragrance of the sea was in the air. Upon the wharf
were hogsheads of molasses unloaded from a vessel just arrived from
Jamaica. Boys had knocked out a bung and were running a stick into the
hole and lapping the molasses. The sailors lounging on the wharf were
speaking a language he could not understand. For the first time in his
life he was in touch, as it were, with the great world beyond the sea.

[Footnote 14: The troops were ordered to Boston in 1765, in
consequence of the riots growing out of the passage of the Stamp Act,
the mob having sacked the house of Chief Justice Thomas Hutchinson.
Though the Stamp Act had been repealed, and though the citizens were
orderly and law-abiding, the regiments remained.]

[Footnote 15: The Bunch of Grapes Tavern stood on the corner of
Mackerel Lane and King Street, now Kilby and State streets. Its sign
was three clusters of grapes. It was a noted tavern, often patronized
by the royal governors. In July, 1776, the Declaration of Independence
was read to the people from its balcony. After hearing it they tore
the lion and unicorn, and all emblems of British authority, from the
Custom House, Court House, and Town House, and made a bonfire of them
in front of the tavern.]

During the day he had met several of the king's soldiers, swaggering
along the streets as if privileged to do