But things won’t let us.” The speaker shook his head nervously. “No, things won’t let us.”

“You think that by holding back you’ll save your property, your season’s crop and all that,” spoke Ezra Prentiss. “But I believe you are mistaken. Suppose most of the men and boys of the towns held back as you seem inclined to do? What then?”

“It might be a good thing,” answered Josiah, fearfully.

“It is sure to be a very bad thing for you and everybody else. If there is no army to oppose him, Gage will march his regiments out of the city, and he’ll seize, burn and destroy until he has the people of Massachusetts upon their knees.”

The fear that filled the eyes of the two brothers was almost pitiful to see.

“Do you think that will happen?” asked one.

“I sincerely do,” returned Ezra, who, to tell the truth, was rather disgusted at this exhibition of selfish cowardice.

The farmers consulted together in whispers. Then Josiah said:

“As my brother remarked, we’d like to do all we can. But we have doubts. It’s not altogether our property that holds us back.”

“What then?” asked Ezra.

The man looked toward his brother, who nodded what was intended to be encouragement; but it was of a very timorous sort, indeed.

“Things hereabouts are not altogether right,” said Josiah, lowering his voice to a whisper and leaning over the fence that Ezra might hear. “They haven’t been just what you might call right for some time.”

Ezra regarded him wonderingly.

“Nothing has been right in all the colony for some time,” said he. “So what you say is not surprising.”

The man coughed dryly and waved his hand.

“You don’t quite understand what I mean,” said he. “What you refer to is what everybody has seen, and everybody knows. But what I refer to is what nobody but my brother and I have seen, and what, more than likely, nobody else has any idea of.”

“Something that has to do with the public good?” inquired Ezra.

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