{"id":"01KG8AKG68V316SA6F4DX5KN0Y","cid":"bafkreibn36lbabid2kck5x2ykqsdrf5qyjkq6kx5rgbl54av3norog6z6u","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":7417,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:05.594Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","start_line":7357,"text":"CHAPTER XXVII.\r\nREQUIESCAT IN PACE.\r\n\r\n\r\nIt happened that the ship, gaining her port, was moored to the dock on\r\na Fourth of July; and half an hour after landing, hustled by the\r\nriotous crowd near Faneuil Hall, the old man narrowly escaped being run\r\nover by a patriotic triumphal car in the procession, flying a broidered\r\nbanner, inscribed with gilt letters:\r\n\r\n“BUNKER-HILL\r\n\r\n1775.\r\n\r\nGLORY TO THE HEROES THAT FOUGHT!”\r\n\r\nIt was on Copps’ Hill, within the city bounds, one of the enemy’s\r\npositions during the fight, that our wanderer found his best repose\r\nthat day. Sitting down here on a mound in the graveyard, he looked off\r\nacross Charles River towards the battle-ground, whose incipient\r\nmonument, at that period, was hard to see, as a struggling sprig of\r\ncorn in a chilly spring. Upon those heights, fifty years before, his\r\nnow feeble hands had wielded both ends of the musket. There too he had\r\nreceived that slit upon the chest, which afterwards, in the affair with\r\nthe Serapis, being traversed by a cutlass wound, made him now the\r\nbescarred bearer of a cross.\r\n\r\nFor a long time he sat mute, gazing blankly about him. The sultry July\r\nday was waning. His son sought to cheer him a little ere rising to\r\nreturn to the lodging for the present assigned them by the\r\nship-captain. “Nay,” replied the old man, “I shall get no fitter rest\r\nthan here by the mounds.”\r\n\r\nBut from this true “Potter’s Field,” the boy at length drew him away;\r\nand encouraged next morning by a voluntary purse made up among the\r\nreassembled passengers, father and son started by stage for the country\r\nof the Housatonie. But the exile’s presence in these old mountain\r\ntownships proved less a return than a resurrection. At first, none knew\r\nhim, nor could recall having heard of him. Ere long it was found, that\r\nmore than thirty years previous, the last known survivor of his family\r\nin that region, a bachelor, following the example of three-fourths of\r\nhis neighbors, had sold out and removed to a distant country in the\r\nwest; where exactly, none could say.\r\n\r\nHe sought to get a glimpse of his father’s homestead. But it had been\r\nburnt down long ago. Accompanied by his son, dim-eyed and dim-hearted,\r\nhe next went to find the site. But the roads had years before been\r\nchanged. The old road was now browsed over by sheep; the new one ran\r\nstraight through what had formerly been orchards. But new orchards,\r\nplanted from other suckers, and in time grafted, throve on sunny slopes\r\nnear by, where blackberries had once been picked by the bushel. At\r\nlength he came to a field waving with buckwheat. It seemed one of those\r\nfields which himself had often reaped. But it turned out, upon inquiry,\r\nthat but three summers since a walnut grove had stood there. Then he\r\nvaguely remembered that his father had sometimes talked of planting\r\nsuch a grove, to defend the neighboring fields against the cold north\r\nwind; yet where precisely that grove was to have been, his shattered\r\nmind could not recall. But it seemed not unlikely that during his long\r\nexile, the walnut grove had been planted and harvested, as well as the\r\nannual crops preceding and succeeding it, on the very same soil.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AJJRW0X9WGP6T2MJ7WX66","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1DKC9HHJRKY25JZBEXW","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AKG68DWWKGR9A2J6VXAW9","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:06.344Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:48:18.915Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}