"ElizaLeeFollen-WhoSpokeNext" - читать интересную книгу автора (Follen Eliza Lee)

slain. The poor fellow! I never shall forget his sorrow. He groaned
as if his heart would break, and then he laid himself down on the
ground by the side of his father's body, and wept bitterly.

One must be made of harder stuff than I am, to forget such a thing
as this. I do not ever like to speak of it, or of the painful scene
that followed. The poor widow and her fatherless children! It seemed
a dreadful work that I and such as I were made to perform.

But there were other things to be thought of then. The British soon
returned from Concord, where they had destroyed some barrels of
flour and killed two or three men.

In the mean time, the men from all the neighboring towns collected
together, armed with all the muskets they could find, and annoyed
them severely on their return by firing on them from behind stone
walls.

My master's brother took me from the corner where I had been again
placed, and joined the party. He placed himself behind a fence by
which they must pass, and took such good aim with me that down fell
a man every time I spoke.

Other muskets performed the same work. What they did you may judge
of, when I tell you that, while two hundred and seventy-three
Englishmen fell that day, only eighty-eight Americans were killed. I
will not talk of what I myself performed, for I despise a boaster,
but I did my share of duty, I believe.

About two months after this, uncle John, as the children called him,
came again to borrow me. He was going to join the few brave men who
opposed the British force at Bunker or Breed's Hill.

"Sister," he said, "you will lend me the musket, will you not? I
cannot afford to buy one, and we must teach these English what stuff
we are made of."

"Let me go, Mother," said the eldest boy. "I am old enough now; I am
almost nineteen; let me go."

His mother said nothing; she looked at the vacant chair which was
called his father's; she considered a while, and then took me and
put me into her son's hands.

"God bless you, William," she said, "and bring you back safe to us;
but do your duty and fear nothing."

She kissed him, and he left her. I felt William's heart beat bravely
as he shouldered me. He was a fine fellow. We were as one. I was
proud of him, and he of me. No man and musket did better than