One afternoon in April, 1775, a young stable boy in Boston overheard a British army officer tell another that there would be “hell to pay tomorrow.” Running to the home of a local silversmith, a certain Paul Revere, he reported what he had heard. Putting this information together with rumors he had heard of British officers gathered on Boston's long wharf, Revere and his friend Joseph Warren became convinced that the British were about to march on the town of Lexington to arrest colonial leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams and seize stores of arms that were stocked in the town of Concord by the local militia (Gladwell 2002: 1–2). “What happened next,” writes Malcolm Gladwell, “has become part of historical legend, a tale told to every American schoolchild.” Revere crossed the harbor to the ferry landing at Charlestown, saddled up, and began his “midnight ride.” “In every town he passed through along the way,” Gladwell continues, “he knocked on doors and spread the word, telling local colonial leaders of the oncoming British, and telling them to spread the word to others”: