m the highlands of Roxbury, from Cobble Hill, from
floating batteries in Charles River, cannon-balls were hurled upon the
town. Bombs exploded in the streets; one in a guardhouse, wounding six
soldiers. The redcoats sprang to their guns, to give shot for shot.
Little sleep could the people get, through the long wearisome Saturday
night. During Sunday the lips of the cannon were silent, but with the
coming of night again they thundered. General Howe was wondering what
Mr. Washington was intending to do, not mistrusting there was a long
line of ox-carts loaded with picks and spades, bales of hay, and casks
filled with stones; the teamsters waiting till Major Walden should
give a signal for them to move.

While the cannon were flashing, General Thomas, with two thousand men,
marched across the marshes along Dorchester Bay and up the hill
overlooking the harbor. Major Walden gave the signal, and the farmers
started their teams,--those with picks, and spades, and casks
following the soldiers; those with hay halting on the marsh land,
unloading, and piling the bales in a line so as to screen the passage.
Major Walden, General Rufus Putnam, and Colonel Gridley hastened to
the summit of the hill in advance of the troops. Colonel Gridley
marked the lines for a fortification; the soldiers stacked their arms,
seized picks and spades, and broke the frozen earth. The moon was at
its full. From the hill, the soldiers could look down upon the harbor
and see the warships and great fleet of transports, with masts and
yard-arms outlined in the refulgent light. Robert expected to see a
cannon flash upon the Scarborough, the nearest battleship; but the
sentinel pacing the deck heard no sound of delving pick or shovel.
Walden piloted the carts to the top of the hill, and placed the casks
in such position that they could be set rolling down the steep at a
moment's notice. The soldiers chuckled at the thought of the commotion
they would make in the ranks of the redcoats, were they to make an
assault and suddenly see the casks rolling and tumbling, sweeping all
before them!

General Howe was astonished, when daylight dawned, to see an
embankment of yellow earth crowning the hill overlooking the harbor.

"The rebels have done more in a night than my army would have done in
a month," he said, after looking at the works with his telescope. What
should he do? Mr. Washington's cannon would soon be sending shot and
shell upon the warships, the tr