Every village and every farm-house helped to swell the number. The
remotest hamlet furnished its contingent. In distant Connecticut,
gallant old General Putnam heard the news while plowing. Prompt as
when he dragged the wolf from its den, he unyoked his oxen, left his
plow in the furrow, and, leaping to his saddle, galloped to the fray.
Fiery Ethan Allen, at the head of his Green Mountain Boys, was eager
to march, but paused to execute that marvelous enterprise which
secured for the patriot cause the formidable fortresses of Ticonderoga
and Crown Point, with all their military stores. Day by day the
multitude increased, until thirty thousand men were encamped around
Boston, from Charlestown Neck to Dorchester.
31. From the evening of the Lexington fight General Gage was shut up
in Boston. The patriots kept a strict guard on every road, and no
parties were permitted to pass out or provisions to pass in. All
supplies for the town came by sea. The officers chafed under the
enforced inactivity. They would be done with the ignoble work of
defense behind fortifications. They longed for an opportunity to
regain the prestige lost on that fatal nineteenth of April. But
General Gage was too wise a commander to risk the safety of his army,
so he held the impatience of his officers in check and awaited events.
32. The patriot leaders were equally impatient.
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