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Jeremy went early to bed that night. His right arm was weary and his left arm ached; nevertheless, he went straightway to dreaming that both arms were dragging his beloved mother forth from Boston.

At midnight his companion of the morning came and stood under his chamber window, and tapped lightly with a bean-pole against the glass to awaken him.

Jeremy heard the sound, but in his dream thought it was a gun fired from one of the ships in the harbor at his mother, and himself, and Boston.

“Jeremy, get up!” said somebody, touching his shoulder.

“Come, mother!” ejaculated Jeremy, clutching at the air and uttering the words under tremendous pressure.

“Come yourself, lad,” said somebody, shaking him a little roughly; whereupon Jeremy awoke. “Get up, Jeremy Jagger. Hitch the oxen to the cart. Put on the hay-rigging. Stay, I must help you to do that; but hurry.”

Jeremy rubbed his eyes, wondered what had become of his mother, and how Mr. Wooster found his way into the house in the night, and lastly, what was to be done. Furthermore, he dressed with speed, and awakened the oxen by vigorous touches and moving words.

“Get up! get up!” he importuned, “and work for your country, and may be you won’t be killed and eaten for your country when you are old.” The large, patient eyes of the oxen slowly opened into the night, and after awhile the vigorous strokes and voiceful “get ups” of their master had due effect.

Mr. Wooster helped to adjust the hay-rigging, and then the large-wheeled cart rolled grindingly over the frozen ground of the highway, until it turned into the path leading into the swamp, over which the snow lay in unbroken surface. Jeremy Jagger’s was but the pioneer cart that night. A half-dozen rolled and tumbled and reeled over the uneven surface behind him, to the log bridge. It was cold and still. As the topmost fagot was tossed on the pile in his cart he drew off a mitten, thrust his benumbed fingers between his parted lips, and when he removed them said: “I hope General Washington has had a better birthday than mine.”

“I know one thing, my lad.”

Jeremy turned quickly, for he did not recognize the voice. Even then he could not discern the face; but he knew instantly that it was no common person who had spoken. Nevertheless, with that sturdy, good-as-anybody air that made the men of April 19th and June 17th fight so gloriously, he demanded:

“What do you know?”

“That General Washington would gladly change places with you to-night, if you are the honest lad you seem to be.”

“Go and see him in his comfortable bed over there in Cambridge,” was Jeremy’s response, uttered in the same breath with the word to his oxen to move on. They moved on. The fagots reeled and swayed, the cart rumbled over the logs of the bridge, and boy, oxen and cart were soon lost to sight and hearing in the cedar thickets of the swamp.

Through the next two hours they toiled on, Jeremy on foot, and often ready to lie down with the healthy sleep that would not leave its hold on his weary brain.

It was day-dawn when the fagots had been duly delivered at the appointed place and Jeremy reached home.

He had been cautiously bidden to see that the cart was not left outside with its tell-tale rigging. He obeyed the injunction, shut the oxen in, gave them double allowance of hay, and was startled by Aunt Hannah’s cheery call of: “Jerry, my boy, come to breakfast.”

“Breakfast ready?” said Jeremy.

“Why, yes. I was up early this morning, and thought of you.” And that was the only allusion Aunt Hannah made to his night’s work. He longed to tell her and chat about it all at the table; but, remembering his promise in the swamp, he said not a word.

Six nights out of seven Jeremy and his oxen worked all night and slept nearly all day.