to four hundred, they advanced to the bridge and brought on a
fight which resulted in loss of life on both sides. Then, pushing on
across the bridge, they forced the British to withdraw into the town.

[Illustration: Map: Boston and Vicinity.]

The affair had become more serious than the British had expected. Even in
the town they could not rest, for an ever-increasing body of minutemen
kept swarming into Concord from every direction.

By noon Colonel Smith could see that it would be unwise to delay the
return to Boston. So, although his men had marched twenty miles, and had
had little or no food for fourteen hours, he gave the order for the return
march.

But when they started back, the minutemen kept after them and began a
deadly attack. It was an unequal fight. The minutemen, trained to woodland
warfare, slipped from tree to tree, shot down the worn and helpless
British soldiers, and then retreated only to return and repeat the
harassing attack.

[Illustration: Concord Bridge.]

The wooded country through which they were passing favored this kind of
fighting. But even in the open country every stone wall and hill, every
house and barn seemed to the exhausted British troops to bristle with the
guns of minutemen. The retreating army dragged wearily forward, fighting
as bravely as possible, but on the verge of confusion and panic.

They reached Lexington Common at two o'clock, quite overcome with fatigue.
There they were met by one thousand two hundred fresh troops, under Lord
Percy, whose timely arrival saved the entire force from capture. Lord
Percy's men formed a square for the protection of the retreating soldiers,
and into it they staggered, falling upon the ground, "with their tongues
hanging out of their mouths like those of dogs after a chase."

After resting for an hour, the British again took up their march to
Boston. The minutemen, increasing in numbers every moment, kept up the
same kind of running attack that they had made between Concord and
Lexington until, late in the day, the redcoats came under the protection
of the guns of the war vessels in Boston Harbor.

The British had failed. There was no denying that. They had been driven
back, almost in a panic, to Boston, with a loss of nearly three hundred
men. The Americans had not lost one hundred.

But the King was not aroused to the situation. He had a vision of his
superb regiments in their brilliant uniforms overriding all before them.

And