Though the Governor averred that his object, in his verbal communication, was to give a chance for an interposition of such sound advice, yet to Lord Hillsborough he actually represented the call and the movement of these men as proofs that the long-contemplated insurrection was now at hand.  He informed the Secretary, that on the next evening (Friday) there was a large private meeting, where “it was the general opinion that they should raise the country and oppose the troops”; and that on the succeeding evening (Saturday) there was a very small private meeting at the house of one of the chiefs, where it was resolved “to surprise and take the Castle the Monday night following.”  The Governor evidently had misgivings about its being the fact that such an object was planned.  “I don’t,” he said, “relate these as facts, but only as reported and believed.”  I have found no account of the Friday-evening meeting, which undoubtedly was a meeting of one of the political clubs of the time; but on Saturday evening James Otis and Samuel Adams met at Warren’s residence in Hanover Street (on the site of the American House) for conference as to Monday’s meeting,—­for instance, to draw up the resolves and decide upon the action that might be expedient:  whatever may have been the warmth of expression of popular leaders, or the wishes of extremists among the people, the whole object of this conference was to concentrate and use only the moral force of public opinion; and there is not a trace of a design of insurrection in all the known private correspondence of these patriots.

However, the belief in insurrection, at this time, appears to have been as strongly rooted in the minds of prominent Loyalists as it was in the mind of the again perturbed Governor.  Signs of what is thought to be near at hand are apt to be seen or fancied; and it was so in this case.  Somebody had put a turpentine barrel in the skillet that hung at the top of the beacon-pole on Beacon Hill.  Now it had been designed, for a long time, by such a mode of bonfire, to alarm the country, in case of invasion.  This fact was put with another fact, namely, that the beacon had been newly repaired; and from the two facts was drawn the startling inference, that matters were ready for a rising in the town, and for giving the concerted signal to summon in the country to aid this rising,—­and this, too, when the Governor had not a sergeant’s guard of real soldiers nearer than two hundred miles.  And now members of the Council flocked to the Governor and demanded a meeting of this imposing body; and a meeting was promptly held at a gentleman’s residence half-way between Boston and Jamaica Plain, where, after grave debate about taking down the barrel, it was finally voted to make a formal demand on the Board of Selectmen to order it to be done.  On the next day, (Sunday,) the Fathers of the Town held a special meeting to consider the vote of the Council, which resulted in declining to act on this matter of taking down the barrel as too trivial.  About the hour of dining, on this day, however, Sheriff Greenleaf gave some peace to the frightened officials by repairing to Beacon Hill with half a dozen others and removing the obnoxious barrel, which proved to be empty.  The public did not hear the last of this affair for months, as may be seen in the affidavits about it, afterwards, in the journals.