“’Twere all due to the freight,” he said to a friend.  “Ye see their guns was p’intin’ our way and behind us were a ton o’ gunpowder.  She’s awful particular comp’ny.  Makes her nervous to have anybody nigh her that’s bein’ shot at.  Ye got to be peaceful an’ p’lite.  Don’t let no argements come up.  If some feller wants yer money an’ has got a gun it’ll be cheaper to let him have it.  I tell ye she’s an uppity, hot-tempered ol’ critter—­got to be treated jest so er she’ll stomp her foot an’ say, ‘Scat,’ an’ then—­”

Solomon smiled and gave his right hand a little upward fling and said no more, having lifted the burden off his mind.

On the post road, beyond Horse Neck in Connecticut, they had a more serious adventure.  They had been traveling with a crude map of each main road, showing the location of houses in the settled country where, at night, they could find shelter and hospitality.  Owing to the peculiar character of their freight, the Committee in Philadelphia had requested them to avoid inns and had caused these maps to be sent to them at post-offices on the road indicating the homes of trusted patriots from twenty to thirty miles apart.  About six o’clock in the evening of July twentieth, they reached the home of Israel Lockwood, three miles above Horse Neck.  They had ridden through a storm which had shaken and smitten the earth with its thunder-bolts some of which had fallen near them.  Mr. Lockwood directed them to leave their wagons on a large empty barn floor and asked them in to supper.

“If you’ll bring suthin’ out to us, I guess we better stay by her,” said Solomon.  “She might be nervous.”

“Do you have to stay with this stuff all the while?” Lockwood asked.

“Night an’ day,” said Solomon.  “Don’t do to let ’er git lonesome.  To-day when the lightnin’ were slappin’ the ground on both sides o’ me, I wanted to hop down an’ run off in the bush a mile er so fer to see the kentry, but I jest had to set an’ hope that she would hold her temper an’ not go to slappin’ back.”

“She,” as Solomon called the two loads, was a most exacting mistress.  They never left her alone for a moment.  While one was putting away the horses the other was on guard.  They slept near her at night.

Israel Lockwood sat down for a visit with them when he brought their food.  While they were eating, another terrific thunder-storm arrived.  In the midst of it a bolt struck the barn and rent its roof open and set the top of the mow afire.  Solomon jumped to the rear wheel of one of the wagons while Jack seized the tongue.  In a second it was rolling down the barn bridge and away.  The barn had filled with smoke and cinders but these dauntless men rolled out the second wagon.

Rain was falling.  Solomon observed a wisp of smoke coming out from under the roof of this wagon.  He jumped in and found a live cinder which had burned through the cover and fallen on one of the barrels.  It was eating into the wood.  Solomon tossed it out in the rain and smothered “the live spot.”  He examined the barrels and the wagon floor and was satisfied.  In speaking of that incident next day he said to Jack: