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“I’ve never seen the inside of it,” said Mother Moulton. “It holds the poor old soul’s sole treasure, and I do want to save it for him if I can.”

They had drawn it with much hard endeavor as far as the garret stairs, but their united strength failed to lift it. “Heave it, now!” cried Joe, and lo! it was up two steps. So they turned it over and over with many a thudding thump;–every one of which thumps Uncle John heard and believed to be strokes upon the box itself to burst it asunder–until it was fairly shelved on the garret floor.

In the very midst of the overturnings, a voice from below had been heard crying out, “Let my box alone! Don’t you break it open! If you do, I’ll–I’ll–” but, whatever the poor man meant to threaten as a penalty, he could not think of anything half severe enough to say, so left it uncertain as to the punishment that might be looked for.

“Poor old soul!” ejaculated the little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter’s edge.

“Now, Joe,” she said, “we’ll heap nubbins over it, and if the soldiers want corn they’ll take good ears and never think of touching poor nubbins.” So they fell to work throwing corn over the red chest, until it was completely concealed from view.

Then Joe sprang to the high-up-window ledge in the point of the roof and took one glance out. “Oh, I see them, the Red Coats! ‘Strue’s I live, there go our militia up the hill. I thought they was going to stand and defend. Shame on ’em, I say!” Jumping down and crying back to Mother Moulton, “I’m going to stand by the minute men,” he went down, three steps at a leap, and nearly overturned Uncle John on the stairs, who, with many groans, was trying to get to the defense of his strong box.

“What did you help her for, you scamp?” he demanded of Joe, flourishing his staff unpleasantly near the lad’s head.

“‘Cause she asked me to, and couldn’t do it alone,” returned Joe, dodging the stick and disappearing from the scene at the very moment Martha Moulton encountered Uncle John.

“Your strong box is safe under nubbins in the garret, unless the house burns down, and now that you are up here, you had better stay,” she added soothingly, as she hastened by him to reach the kitchen below.

Once there, she paused a second or two to take resolution regarding her next act. She knew full well that there was not one second to spare, and yet she stood looking, apparently, into the glowing embers on the hearth. She was flushed and excited, both by the unwonted toil and the coming events. Cobwebs from the rafters had fallen on her hair and homespun dress, and would readily have betrayed her late occupation to any discerning soldier of the king.

A smile broke suddenly over her fair face, displacing for a brief second every trace of care. “It’s my old weapon, and I must use it,” she said, making a stately courtesy to an imaginary guest, and straightway disappeared within an adjoining room. With buttoned door and dropped curtains the little woman made haste to array herself in her finest raiment. In five minutes she reappeared in the kitchen, a picture pleasant to look at. In all New England, there could not be a more beautiful little old lady than Martha Moulton was that day. Her hair was guiltless now of cobwebs, but haloed her face with fluffy little curls of silvery whiteness, above which, like a crown, was a little cap of dotted muslin, pure as snow. Her erect figure, not a particle of the hard-working-day in it now, carried well the folds of a sheeny, black silk gown, over which she had tied an apron as spotless as the cap.