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General Howe said: “We must get away from here in haste.”

“Take us with you,” said a thousand Royalists of the town; and he took them, bag and baggage, to wander up and down the earth.

Over on Bunker Breed’s Hill wooden sentinels did duty when the British soldiers left and for full two hours after; and then two brave Yankees guessed the men were wooden, and marched in to take possession just nine months from the day they bade it good-by, because they had no powder with which to “tune” their guns.

Over on Cambridge Common marched, impatient as ever, General Putnam, with his four thousand followers, ready to cross the River Charles and walk once more the city streets of the good old town. On all the hills were gathered men, women and children to see the British troops depart.

Jeremy Jagger was up before the dawn on that sweetest of Sunday mornings in March, and he reached the Roxbury lines just as General Ward was ready to put his arms about Boston’s Neck. The lad took his place with the five hundred men and walked by Ensign Richards’ side, as he proudly bore the standard up to the gates, which Ebenezer Learned “unbarred and opened.” Once within the lines, Jeremy, unmindful of the crow’s feet strewn over the way, made haste through lane and street to his old home on Beacon Hill. “Could that be his mother looking out at him through the window-pane?” he thought, as he drew near.

She saw him. She knew him. But what could it mean that she did not open the door to let him in; that she waved him away? It could not be that she, his own mother, had turned Tory, that her face was grown so red and angry at the sight of her son.

Jeremy banged away at the door. There was no answer.

At last he heard the lifting of a sash, a head, muffled carefully, appeared from the highest window in the house, and a voice (the lad knew whose it was) said: “Go, Jeremy! Go away out of Boston as fast as you can. I’ll come to you as soon as it is safe.”

“Why, mother, what’s the matter?” cried the boy.

“Small pox! I’ve had it. Everybody has it. Go!”

“Good-by,” cried Jeremy, running out of Boston as fast as any British soldier of them all and a good deal more frightened. He burst into Aunt Hannah’s house with the news that he had been to Boston, that the soldiers were all gone, that he had seen his mother, that she had the small-pox and sent him off in a hurry.

“Tut! tut!” she cried. “It’s wicked to tell lies, Jeremy Jagger.”

“I’m not telling lies. Every word is true. Please give me something to eat.”

But Aunt Hannah did not wait to give the lad food, nor even to speak the prayer of thanksgiving that went like incense from her heart. She went into the barn-yard and threw corn on the barn-floor, to which the hens and turkeys made haste. Closing the door, she summoned Jeremy to kill the largest and best of them.

That Sunday afternoon the brick oven glowed with fervent heat, the white, fat offerings went in, and the golden-brown turkeys and chickens came out; and as each, in turn, was pronounced “done,” Aunt Hannah repeated the words: “Hungry! hungry! hungry! Hungry all winter!”

The big clothes-basket was full of lint for wounds that now never should be made. Gladly she tossed out the fluffy mass, and packed within it every dainty the house contained.

It was nearly sunset when Aunt Hannah and Jeremy started forth, with the basket between them, to Mr. Wooster’s house, hoping that he would carry it in his wagon up to Boston. He was not at home.

“Get out the cart,” said Aunt Hannah to Jeremy, when they learned no help was to be obtained. She sat by the roadside watching the basket until the cart arrived.