240 History of Hingham. 



days of spring, his successful attack on one place after another, 

 together with the destruction of Captain Pierce, of Scituate, and 

 nearly all his command, while in pursuit of a body of Indians 

 near Scekonk, the burning of Marlborough, and the murders at 

 Long Meadow, all on March 26th, imperatively called for the 

 speedy reasscmblage of the troops, and for vigorous measures by 

 the three colonies. It would not be easy to overestimate the 

 anxiety and alarm at this time. Various plans were proposed, 

 and among them was that of building a continuous stockade from 

 Charles River to the Merrimac. This was only negatived because 

 of its magnitude. In the various towns the forts and garrison 

 houses were constantly occupied, and the utmost precaution taken 

 against surprise. May we venture, for the sake of the better 

 understanding of the time, to attempt one more sketch, outlined 

 by the recorded facts and the bits of tradition, but shaded and 

 filled in rather by the assistance of our general knowledge of the 

 people, the times, and the situation, than by any particulars of 

 the especial day ? 



It is the 16th of April, and the Sabbath-day ; a bright, crisp 

 morning, but the sun is already softening the surface of the quiet 

 pools thinly skimmed, perhaps for the last time in the earlier 

 hours ; the frost coming out of the ground makes moist the 

 paths ; the brook at the foot of the meeting-house hill is dancing 

 with its swollen flood and sparkling in the sunlight, while over 

 and along it the pussy-willows are already nodding, and the red 

 maple's blossoms go sailing and tossing in the pools and eddies. 

 A little further up the stream the ever-graceful elms are begin- 

 ning to look fresh and feathery in their swelling and opening 

 buds, while on the slopes rising up from the valley the blossoms 

 of the wild cherry and the dogwood gleam white among the dark 

 trunks and branches of the oaks and the sombre shadows of the 

 evergreens. In the warm nooks the blue, and in the swampier 

 meadow the white violet breathes out the same faint sweetness 

 which in the same spots, two hundred years later, will delight the 

 school-children of another age, while above them the red berries 

 of the alder and the seed-vessels of last year's wdd roses give 

 brightness and color to the shrubbery not yet awakened to its 

 new life ; the bluebird, the song sparrow, and the robin twitter 

 in the branches, while a great black crow lazily flaps his way 

 across to the horizon ; possibly here and there, in some shaded 

 and protected places, the melting remnants of a late snow linger 

 yet, but in the clearings elsewhere the young grass has already 

 veiled the earth in fresh green. The furrows of the planting 

 fields show that the farmer has already commenced his prepara- 

 tion for the spring sowing, but some of the more distant lots tell 

 of the universal apprehension, for last autumn's stubble in them 

 still stands unmolested. The quiet of the Puritan Sabbath has 

 no fears for his highness the barnyard cock, whose clarion and 



