Just as the sun was rising, Major Pitcairn marched into Lexington, where
he found forty or fifty minutemen ready to dispute his advance.
"Disperse, ye rebels; disperse!" he cried, riding up. But they did not
disperse. Pitcairn ordered his men to fire, and eighteen minutemen fell to
the ground.
Before the arrival of Pitcairn the British officers who had captured
Revere and Dawes returned with them to Lexington, where, commanding Revere
to dismount, they let him go. Running off at full speed to the house where
Samuel Adams and John Hancock were staying, he told them what had
happened, and then guided them across the fields to a place of safety.
Leaving the shocked and dazed villagers to collect their dead and wounded,
Colonel Smith hastened to Concord. He arrived about seven in the morning,
six hours after Doctor Prescott had given the alarm.
There had been time to hide the military stores, so the British could not
get at those. But they cut down the liberty-pole, set fire to the
court-house, spiked a few cannon, and emptied some barrels of flour.
About two hundred of them stood guard at the North Bridge, while a body of
minutemen gathered on a hill on the opposite side.
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