FOUNDER OF HIS RACE 141 



As Captain Dulaney noticed the last word he said to 

 himself, with relief : 



" 'Tis well ! We've nothing to fear. Lieutenant Van 

 Sicklen was right. The people in this locality are pa- 

 triots. He will return this way, perhaps, so I shall put 

 the flag back with my private mark.""^ 



He made a certain distinguishing mark and laid the 

 flag back on the sill. 



A strange event occurred on their way home through 

 the darkness. 



Suddenly there was a hissing, as of red hot iron thrust 

 into water, a familiar sound to Morgan who had lived 

 fo long near a forge, and then there came a violent ex- 

 plosion. The earth fairly shook, and the horse felt his 

 rider start in the saddle. He himself was so taken by 

 surprise that he stopped so sharply his hoofs plowed 

 great furrows in the ground. 



Then Captain Dulaney spoke, and the sound of his 

 steady voice quieted him. 



'* Tis but a mass of iron fallen from space, old fel- 

 low — a meteor, they call it — a rare and interesting sight 

 if one happens to be far enough away ! Any nearer for 

 us might have made Mistress Dulaney a widow without 

 a riding horse !" He laughed reassuringly. "We will 

 show the British a few stars like that at shorter range, 

 pretty soon. What say you?" 



Morgan waved his tail. 



* In December, 1907, a furled flag, covered widi dust and dirt, 

 and exactly answering the description of the flag examined by 

 Captain Dulaney, was discovered on the sill of an old barn on 

 what is now known as the Jed Mack Farm, at S wanton Junction, 

 Vermont. The flag was old — everr in 1814 — for there were but 

 thirteen stripes on it, and had been made before Vermont was 

 admitted to the Union. 



The finding of the flag nearly a century later proves that 

 Lieut. Van Sicklen did not return that way and accounts for 

 the discovery of the flag so long afterwards. 



