An anonymous figure offers to tell their friend a new story about the American Revolution that involves Paul Revere and a little-known figure named Lige Butterwick. Lige was a farmer who lived outside Lexington, Massachusetts. He mainly remained blissfully ignorant of New England’s political state until he developed a toothache. Lige rides into town, abuzz with news of Mr. Hancock and Mr. Adams staying nearby. Still, the barber who usually would pull his tooth recommends him instead to a silversmith in Boston named Paul Revere. In pulsing pain, Lige rides for Boston and notes the tense political scene on the streets, with soldiers and gunships everywhere. He stops for dinner at a tavern and accidentally gets into an altercation over his political beliefs, then is chased down the street by angry British soldiers. At last, he arrives at Paul Revere’s silver shop and sits to the side to observe the man and his customers. After one vulgar woman claims she’ll take her business to England instead, Lige finally makes his presence known and asks for a solution to his toothache. Revere is in a rush, but he pauses when he hears Lige is from Lexington and recently saw Hancock and Adams there. He hurriedly gives him a draught for his pain and a box with an artificial tooth, then tells Lige to return the next day. Lige realizes he grabbed the wrong silver box in his bed at a tavern that night and wonders what’s inside. He hears the sounds of revolution when he holds the box to his ear. Realizing he must return the item to Paul Revere, he chases him back to Lexington, where he sees Revere saving a box of Hancock’s papers from the British. Lige notices a line of Minute Men standing up to another line of British soldiers, and he decides to join the troops and break the box under his foot to release the revolution into the world.