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It was Commander-in-chief Washington’s birthday, and it was Jeremy Jagger’s birthday.

General Washington was forty-four years old that birthday, a hundred years ago. Jeremy Jagger was fourteen, and early in the morning of the 22d of February, 1776, the General and the lad were looking upon the same bit of country, but from different positions. General George Washington was reviewing his precious little army for the thousandth time; the lad Jeremy was looking from a hill upon the camp at Cambridge, and from thence across the River Charles over into Boston, which city had, for many months, been held by the British soldiers.

At last Jeremy exclaimed: “I say, it’s too chestnut-bur bad; it is.”

“Did you step on one?” questioned a tall, hard-handed, earnest-faced man, who at the instant had come up to the stone-wall on which Jeremy stood, surveying the camp and its surroundings.

“No, I didn’t,” retorted the lad; “but I wish Boston was paved all over with chestnut-burs, and that every pesky British officer in it had to walk barefoot from end to end fourteen times a day, I do; and the fourteenth time I’d order two or three Colony generals to take a turn with ’em. General Gates for one.”

“Come along, Jeremy,” called his companion, who had strode across the wall and gone on, regardless of the boy’s words.

When Jeremy had ended his expressed wishes, he gathered up his hatchet, dinner-basket, and coil of stout cord, and plunged through the snow after his leader.

When he had overtaken him, the impulsive lad’s heart burst out at the lips with the words: ” We could take Boston now, just as easy as anything–without wasting a jot of powder either. Skip across the ice, don’t you see, and be right in there before daylight. A big army lying still for months and months, and just doing nothing but wait for folks in Boston to starve out! I say it’s shameful; now, too, when the ice has come that General Washington has been waiting all winter for.”

“You won’t help your country one bit by scolding about it, Jeremy. You’d better save your strength for cutting willow-rods to-day.”

“I’d cut like a hurricane if the rods were only going to whip the enemy with. But just for sixpence a day–pshaw! I say, it don’t pay.”

“Look here, lad, can you keep a secret?”

“Trust me for that,” returned Jeremy. Turning suddenly upon his questioner, he faced him to listen to a supposed bit of information.

“Then why on earth are you talking to me in that manner, boy?” questioned the man.

“Why you know all about it, just as well as I do; and a fellow must speak out in the woods or somewhere. Why, I get so mad and hot sometimes that it seems as if every thought in me would burn right out on my face, when I think about my poor mother over there,” pointing backward to the three-hilled city.

The two were standing at the moment midway of a corn-field. The February wind was lifting and rustling and shaking rudely the withered corn-stalks, with their dried leaves. To the northward lay the Cambridge camp, across the Charles River. To the south and east, just over Muddy River and Stony Brook, lay the right wing of the American Army, with here a fort and there a redoubt stretching at intervals all the distance between the camp at Cambridge and Dorchester Neck, on the southeast side of Boston. Behind them, to the westward, lay Cedar Swamp, while not more than half a mile to the front there was a four-gun battery and Brookline Fort, on the Charles, near by.

While Jeremy Jagger was pouring forth his words with vociferous violence, the man by his side glanced eagerly about the wide field; but, satisfying himself that no one was within hearing, he said, resting his hatchet on the lad’s shoulder while speaking: “See here, my boy. The brave man never boasts of his bravery nor the trustworthy man of his trustworthiness. How you learned what you know of the plans of General Washington I do not care to ask; but to-day and all days keep quiet and show yourself worthy of being trusted.”