“Enjoying the bonfire?” It was Charlie. His face, gleaming menacingly in the light of the flames, contorted into a snarl. “After the fort, we’re coming for you.”

Master was so horrified that for a moment he could not speak; and by the time he said, “But Charlie …” it was too late. Charlie had gone.

He was glad to see, when he reached his house, that all the shutters were closed. Once inside, he told Hudson to bolt the doors. Everyone knew what was passing at the fort nearby, and Mercy looked at him anxiously. “I got the guns ready, Boss,” Hudson whispered to him. But he shook his head, and murmured: “There’s too many. Better not provoke ’em. But if they come, you and Solomon take all the women down to the cellar.” The worst moment was when Abigail, her eyes wide and round, asked him: “Is the bad man who hates you coming to kill us?”

“No such thing, child.” He smiled. “We’ll all go into the parlor now, and I’ll read you a story.”

So he and Mercy and Hudson’s wife and the other household servants all went and sat in the parlor. And John read to them from the children’s tales that Abigail liked. But Hudson and young Solomon kept watch on the street from the windows upstairs.

An hour passed, and more. From time to time they heard roars from the direction of the fort, but the crowds did not seem to be coming in their direction. Eventually, Hudson came down, and said: “Sounds like they’re going away. Maybe I’ll take a look.” But Master wasn’t sure whether to let him.

“I don’t want you getting hurt,” he objected.

“It ain’t the black men, Boss, that they’re after tonight,” Hudson answered quietly. A few moments later he slipped out into the street.

An hour passed before he returned. The news he brought was not good. After burning the effigies of the governor, the crowd had swung back up Broadway to the house of Major James, the fort’s English artillery commander. “They took everything out of his house—china, furniture, books. Smashed all they could and burned the rest. You never saw such destruction.”