but the soldier got up without emotion and was preparing to resume his march in silence with fewer accoutrements.

But as the young lady was assisting in his restoration to good order, her eye caught a name and date on the newspaper hat as she said: "Why! Tommy, where did you get this?"

"In the attic. There are lots of them up there. There's another sword too, longer than this one, straight with a kind of lattice work round the handle. I can only just lift it and I can't do much with it. There are lots of bars of soap up there, too. Sometimes I set them up on end and cut at them and stab them. It don't make much of a mark now, but perhaps when I am bigger I can cut one in two with one stroke."

"Oh! Tommy, I am afraid that won't do. You must ask grandma before you fight her soap any more," said she, smiling, "but I know you mustn't use up these papers. Carry this one right back. This tells about your grandma's grandpa, and I know she would never let you destroy it if she knew. He used to go to fight the Indians, and perhaps this paper has something about him."

"Tell me about them, Cousin," said the little fellow, planting himself squarely before her with his eyes ablaze. "When was it? It must have been ever so many years ago."

"I think," said she, reflectively, "it must have been about the time of the battle that music was about which I have just been playing."

"I thought the Indians were away out West," continued he, "only a few good ones about here. My mother used to know some that lived about Passamaquoddy Bay. They were good. They did not want to fight. They used to bring her wild raspberries and such things."

"No. I guess they were good Indians, but you had better ask your grandma about them when you beg her pardon for cutting the soap and taking her newspapers."

"Oh, she don't care about the soap, I know, but I'll carry the paper back now."

Grandma's historical information was fragmentary. Theseus and Romulus she had known something about, for they were the first two lives in Plutarch. Indeed, she had once taken a prize for an essay on the former. Julius Cæsar also had attracted her attention. The boys in school used to speak pieces about him and Brutus. Of Napoleon she used to speak in tones of regret; for, while acknowledging his claims to admiration as a soldier and conqueror, yet his standard of

domestic morality was so entirely different from that under which she had been brought up that she could never heartily admire him. But with the American Revolution she felt thoroughly familiar. She dimly recollected being held up to the window to see General Washington riding through the streets of Boston, and she put on mourning for his death. One of his trusty lieutenants was a familiar figure in the streets of her native town. Lafayette she also saw, and she gloried in his defence of his Queen amid the horrid scenes of the French Revolution.

Grandma could not tell the little boy many stories of former generations, but assured him that his uncle, her brother, if he had time, would tell him more, for she had often heard him speak of the old French wars in which his grandfather had been engaged with so many of his friends and neighbors.

These stories, with gleanings from old records, diaries and newspapers, the little old boy has put into the following pages.

Parson Gay's Three Sermons

CHAPTER I

CAPTAIN LEMUEL BAXTER AND HIS LIEUTENANTS

ON a pleasant afternoon in May, Captain Lemuel Baxter was sitting in the living-room of his house with his wife, both of them in serious mood. They were in early middle life, he a man of average stature, fair but sunburnt complexion, grave and thoughtful grey eyes, a firmly set mouth, and hair which had not yet begun to turn; she of not very different face, figure and manner.

Their expression betokened the good sense, tenacity of purpose, and a reasonably good temper strengthened on occasion by judicious sternness, which were their real characteristics, rather than any more remarkable traits of intellect or disposition. He looked like what he was, a personage of no rank except such as might be temporarily conferred upon him by his fellow citizens, but simply a substantial householder, farmer and trader.

His duty as a good citizen, a zealous militia man, his interest in the general welfare and the defence of the provinces were about to remove him for the second time from the comfortable humdrum scenes of domestic life to those of activity, excitement and mortal peril.

The room in which they sat overlooked the meadow through which gently meandered the town brook on its way to mingle a few rods below with the salt tides in the harbor. On the other side dwelt his cousin, so near that they could

converse from their respective doors without greatly raising their voices, and all around them were the modest homes of their kinsfolk and friends. The captain was not a rich man, even in that day of small fortunes, but he was "forehanded" and could live in comfort. The room contained substantial and some handsome furniture, among the latter a large square chair of polished mahogany, in which he was seated, while on its broad arms were now perched a robust girl of four and a boy of two. His wife, though looking not in the least like a lackadaisical or unduly sentimental person, held his hand. In one corner of the room stood the rough surveyor's compass, with its wooden balland-socket joint, used by his grandfather, the stout old colonel; and over the ample fireplace hung the long, straight, basket-hilted sword worn by the same personage in the Indian wars of two generations before.

Their children, ranging downward in regular gradation from Lemuel, aged twelve, to the baby scarce two months old, now peacefully reposing in his square oak-framed cradle, were much more interested in their father's light sword, the insignia of his rank, and the single-barreled flint-lock, the real weapon upon which he would depend, with its attendant powder horn and bullet pouch, than in the parting which these portended. Even little Harry at last managed to slip down from his father's arm to join in the game of rolling the newly cast leaden spheres over the bare floor.

Mrs. Baxter was a capable and self-reliant woman, but she wished her husband, when he returned, to find his affairs as he would have liked them. This had been the chief subject of their conversation, and there had been but little expression of her fears for his safety, which they both felt in their hearts but neither spoke of. She knew the urgency of the service and she was not the woman to make the parting harder than it had to be.

They had, however, begun to talk of the affairs of the commonwealth and the bearings of the approaching cam