Once more Joe Devins looked in. As he caught a glimpse of the
picture she made, he paused to cry out: "All dressed up to meet
the robbers! My, how fine you do look! I wouldn't. I'd go and
hide behind the nubbins. They'll be here in less than five
minutes now," he cried, "and I'm going over the North Bridge to
see what's going on there."
"O Joe, stay, won't you?" she urged, but the lad was gone, and
she was left alone to meet the foe, comforting herself with the
thought, "They'll treat me with more respect if I LOOK
respectable, and if I must die, I'll die good-looking in my best
clothes, anyhow."
She threw a few sticks of hickory-wood on the embers, and then
drew out the little round stand, on which the family Bible was
always lying. Recollecting that the British soldiers probably
belonged to the Church of England, she hurried away to fetch
Uncle John's "prayer-book."
"They'll have respect to me, if they find me reading that, I
know," she thought. Having drawn the round stand within sight of
the well, and where she could also command a view of the
staircase, she sat and waited for coming events.
Uncle John was keeping watch of the advancing troops from an
upper window. "Martha," he called, "you'd better come up.
They're close by, now." To tell the truth, Uncle John himself was
a little afraid; that is to say he hadn't quite courage enough to
go down, and, perhaps, encounter his own rheumatism and the
king's soldiers on the same stairway, and yet, he felt that he
must defend Martha as well as he could.
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