am Dawes both fell into the hands of the British.

THE BATTLE OF LEXINGTON AND CONCORD

Meantime, the British troops numbering eight hundred men, under
Lieutenant-Colonel Smith, were on their way to Lexington. But before they
had gone far they were made aware, by the ringing of church-bells, the
firing of signal-guns, the beating of drums, and the gleaming of
beacon-fires from the surrounding hilltops, that their secret was out, and
that the minutemen knew what was going on.

[Illustration: Monument on Lexington Common Marking the Line of the
Minutemen.]

Surprised and disturbed by these signs that the colonists were on the
alert, Colonel Smith sent Major Pitcairn ahead with a picked body of
troops, in the hope that they might reach Lexington before the town could
be completely aroused. He also sent back to Boston for more men.

The British commander would have been still more disturbed if he had known
all that was happening, for the alarm-signals were calling to arms
thousands of patriots ready to die for their rights. Hastily wakened from
sleep, men snatched their old muskets from over the door, and bidding a
hurried good-by to wife and children, started for the meeting-places long
before agreed upon.

Just as the sun was rising, Major Pitcairn marched into Lexington, where
he found forty or fifty minutemen ready to dispute his advance.

"Disperse, ye rebels; disperse!" he cried, riding up. But they did not
disperse. Pitcairn ordered his men to fire, and eighteen minutemen fell to
the ground.

Before the arrival of Pitcairn the British officers who had captured
Revere and Dawes returned with them to Lexington, where, commanding Revere
to dismount, they let him go. Running off at full speed to the house where
Samuel Adams and John Hancock were staying, he told them what had
happened, and then guided them across the fields to a place of safety.

Leaving the shocked and dazed villagers to collect their dead and wounded,
Colonel Smith hastened to Concord. He arrived about seven in the morning,
six hours after Doctor Prescott had given the alarm.

There had been time to hide the military stores, so the British could not
get at those. But they cut down the liberty-pole, set fire to the
court-house, spiked a few cannon, and emptied some barrels of flour.

About two hundred of them stood guard at the North Bridge, while a body of
minutemen gathered on a hill on the opposite side. When the minutemen had
increased