HOW IT WAS PLANNED TO BE RUN, AND HOW IT WAS RUN
When a hen is bound to set
Seems as if ’tain’t etiket
Dousin’ her in water till
She’s connected with a chill.
Seems as though ’twas skursely right
Givin’ her a dreadful fright,
Tyin’ rags around her tail,
Poundin’ on an old tin pail,
Chasin’ her around the yard--
Seems as though ’twas kind of hard
Bein’ kicked and ammed and shooed
‘Cause she wants to raise a brood.
--Meditations by Bill Benson’s Boy.
Palermo’s town house is like a roofed dry goods box, its clapboards
unpainted and weather-beaten. It is perched on the gray ledges of
Cross Hill in the centre of the town in order to accommodate the three
villages, and here in lonely state, with no other building nearer than
half a mile, it faces a buffet from every gale and a drenching from
every storm. It is opened once each year--for the annual town meeting in
March.
Solomon Norton, who combined in his person the duties of Palermo’s
hearse driver, sexton and custodian of public buildings, struggled with
the rusty padlock on the outer door of the town house, and then stamped
in and sniffed at the musty atmosphere. The March sun was just rising,
and Solomon Norton was in good season.
“Canned terbacker smoke and left-over speeches,” he growled. “I donno
which smells wust.”
He forced up the warped windows and began to sweep with a stout broom.
The floor was thickly sprinkled with stale sawdust, in which were
flotsam of charred matches, cigar stubs and pipe dottles. The crumpled
ballots of last year’s election lay scattered everywhere. In a few
moments the March breezes were playing with the dust clouds that rolled
from open doors and windows.
The early vanguard of Palermo’s voters was even then on hand--a few men
grouped around horses of uncertain age, whose points and pedigrees they
were discussing with animation. The first “shift” of the day had already
been made, and a tall man with ginger-coloured whiskers was unbuckling
the harness from a stump-tailed bay horse. The man who had traded with
him was as briskly taking the harness from a rangy gray mare.
“Now honest, Lem,” whined the tall man over his shoulder, “what’s the
‘out’ with her? ’Tain’t fair if you don’t tell me, if it’s anything
dang’rous.”
The other man chuckled, and the tall man repeated his plaintive appeal.
But it was only after the transfer of harness had been completed that
the ex-owner of the gray mare replied:
“It’s understood there ain’t goin’ to be no backin’ outs?” he inquired,
after he had again poked a swelling on the stump-tailed horse’s leg and
noted with satisfaction that the animal did not wince. “I gen’-rally
believe in lettin’ t’other feller find the ‘outs’ for hisself.”
“I ain’t goin’ to cry-baby unless she’s a biter--and swappin’ biters
ain’t no fair,” protested the tall man.
“No danger of her bitin’ anything harder’n porridge with them teeth,”
said the man called Lem, with great good humour. “I’d jest’s soon tell
ye. She’s high pressur’.”
“Wind’s broke, hey?”
“’Ep!”
“Bad?” The tall man eyed the gray mare with interest.
“Wa-a-al,” drawled the other, buckling the ends of his reins and
preparing to climb into his waggon, “she ain’t blowed out ary cylinder
head yit, but she sartinly does whistle loud enough so’t your wife can
git supper ready on to the table after she begins to hear ye comin’.”
The bystanders laughed, and Lem climbed into his waggon in still greater
good humour. He turned a beaming face on the new owner of the gray mare.
The aforesaid owner of the gray mare was not a whit disconcerted. He
pulled a bit of strap iron from his pocket and pinched it over the
mare’s nostrils.
“There’s some ‘outs’ that’s wusser’n whistlin’,” he said mysteriously
as he adjusted the strap iron. “You might as well git your laugh in now,
Lem. There’s nothin’ like gittin’ in a laugh at one end or t’other of a
trade.”
Most of Lem’s gayety left him, and he looked at the stump-tailed horse
with some anxiety.
“Now look-a-here, Ben,” said he, “I don’t want no circus animile tucked
off onto me to-day, for I’ve took a contract from Hime Look to haul some
of the old lamed-up codgers to town meetin’.”
“You didn’t say nothin’ to me about your contracts,” replied the tall
man, clawing a freckled hand through his beard. “All I got to say is,
lamed-up old codgers better crawl here on their hands and knees instead
of ride with you. Now, you know there ain’t goin’ to be no backin’ outs
on this trade,” he expostulated as he saw a dubious look come on Lem’s
face.
“Who said there was goin’ to be?” retorted the other. He started to lay
the reins down across the dasher with the evident intent of getting out
to investigate his purchase a little closer, when the horse, who had
been peering around at him from the corner of a bloodshot eye, performed
a sudden and surprising action. He whirled his stump of a tail as though
it worked on a pivot, clutched the reins under it, and started with a
jump that lifted both fore wheels of the waggon off the ground.
The man tugged desperately at the reins, his feet against the dasher,
but the “webbin’s” remained fixed under the tail, and the horse kept on
down the muddy road with speed undiminished. When the outfit went out of
sight around a turn the man was down on his knees tugging at the stump
and shouting “Whoa!”
“I reckon,” said the possessor of the gray mare, twirling a strand of
his ginger-coloured beard into a spill and reflectively tickling his
nose, “that Lem has got holt of a pa’snip there that he won’t pull up in
no great hurry. That’s a hoss,” he continued, turning to the bystanders,
who had watched the runaway with astonished silence, “that I got
plastered on to me about three weeks ago and then found out that I’d
got holt of that Iron Tail Ike, as they call him. He’s give more folks a
h’ist than any other hoss in this county.”
“What will happen to Lem?” inquired one of the men.
“It all depends on how high he flies and what he strikes on when he
comes down,” calmly answered the tall man.
“Hoss swappin’ is hoss swappin’, of course,” said another in the group;
“but this sellin’ folks blastin’ powder with red hair on it ain’t very
neighbourly, as I look at it.”
“Any man that grins at me ’cause he thinks he’s got me stuck and sells
himself out to haul voters for that Hiram Look can nat’rally expect
to have somethin’ comin’ to him and can’t blame nobody if it comes,”
replied the callous tall man. “I’m goin’ to haul men that will vote for
law and order in this town and for them that’s allus led us as citerzens
ought to be led--and that’s with pride and dignity. This slambangin’
style and tryin’ to throw down good men ain’t my notion, and I’m goin’
out to hunt up folks that think my way.”
He hopped over the wheel, tucked his long legs under the waggon seat,
and drove away, the gray mare wheezing past the restraining strap iron.
A man who had been standing in the lee of the town house trying to light
his pipe came away coughing and strangling.
“A chap that runs a threshing machine, like I do, can stand a fair
amount of dust,” he said, wiping the tears from his eyes; “but I got
a couple of whiffs from the tail-end of ‘Wolf’ Doughty’s last year’s
speech as it come out o’ that winder there, and I’ll be blamed if it
didn’t almost put me out of bus’ness.” The men in the little crowd
grinned at him.
“I’m hearin’ that it will be a hotter one that ‘Wolf’ makes this year,”
said one of the men. “He’s got most of the Dunham deestrick crowd lined
up ag’inst Squire Phin’s clique this year.”
“Hime let him have four hundred on a second mo’gidge,” said another.
“You hold a silver dollar in front of ‘Wolf’ and he can’t see over nor
around it.”
“Oh, it goes furder back this time,” returned the first speaker. “The
Dunham deestrickers ain’t ever forgive the Squire for yankin’ the
Haskell girl away from ’em just when they was gittin’ ready to make
a meal off her. It’s lucky the women-folks out that way can’t vote. I
reckon they’d swing town meetin’ ag’inst him.”
“It’s li’ble to be swung, as ’tis,” rejoined another man. “I tell
ye Hime Look is cuttin’ a bigger swath in this town nowadays than most
folks realise. It’s money that talks, and he’s been puttin’ out a lot of
it one way and another.”
“It’s a fact, ain’t it, that him and the Squire don’t hitch at all?”
queried a bystander as he crooked his leg to light a match.
“Wa-a-al,” drawled another voter humorously, “Hime ain’t tried to black
the Squire’s eye yit, the same as he has most others in town, but I
shouldn’t be a dummed bit surprised if it come to that unless they stop
brustlin’ up at each other.”
“Hime wants to look out for his buttons,” observed the man who had
lighted his pipe. “’Cordin’ to stories that have passed ’round town
since King Bradish went away the shoulder hitters ain’t confined to one
branch of the Look fam’ly.”
Solomon Norton came out and got a huge basket of clean sawdust from the
tail of his waggon.
“Put on plenty this year, Sol,” called one of the men. “It’ll be needed
to sop up the blood.”
The soil of the town-house yard, soggy from the March rains, began to
thaw as the sun grew higher and warmer. In increasing numbers waggons
gullied and rutted it. Mud dripped from the wheels and was splattered
on the backs of the voters. Men arrived in pairs or in fours, in narrow
buggies or in double-seated waggons, whose bodies bumped upon the axles
as the wheels slumped into the highway honey-pots. The seiners from the
Cove road, whose horses were their dories, clubbed together and came
in hay-racks. To the front rail of one of these a joker had fastened
a sprit-sail, and the lead horse had a pennant floating from a little
staff set into his bridle.
Before nine o’clock the yard was well filled with men, most of them
assembled in knots that constantly changed personnel as voters trudged
through the sticky ooze from one to the other, shouting jovial greetings
or mumbling certain confidences in undertone. The town clerk, the
selectmen and a constable or two had gone into the town house, trailing
mud upon Solomon Norton’s fresh sawdust; but the main body of the voters
remained outside. The assemblage wore a general air of expectancy.
But the citizens of Palermo were certainly not expecting one spectacle
that day.
When the Willard family carriage scraped its muddy wheels against the
platform in front of the town house Squire Phineas Look was the first to
lift the flap and step out. He gave his hand to Judge Collamore
Willard, whose thin leg trembled as he put out his foot to grope for the
platform.
The space before the door was thronged with men, and the Squire, who
held the old town treasurer’s arm, waited for them to open a passage.
There was a certain grave dignity on the Squire’s face that morning that
the men of Palermo had not been accustomed to see there before. Their
old, free-and-easy greeting seemed out of place now. It was not because
they were astonished at beholding him in company with Judge Willard.
Nor was it the presence of the Judge that restrained them. Somehow, Phin
Look was different, and they instinctively realised it. His isolation
during the past few months while he had been engrossed in his work, the
knowledge that the outside world had begun to give him honour and money,
accounted for a part of the respect that Squire Phin suddenly detected
in the eyes of his townsmen, but there was something in his bearing more
potent still--the intangible aura of the man who had suddenly come to
full knowledge of himself and his abilities.
That intangible something had been in his face, in the poise of his
body, in the straightening of his shoulders and the lift of his chin
ever since he had walked out of the parlour of the Willard house. It is
not surprising that the assembled voters of Palermo did not understand
it, because Squire Phin did not wholly understand it himself. He passed
among them with quiet greetings that made those upon whom they fell
grow warm with pleasure and pride. Selfaggrandisement can bestow no
such favours. The people of Palermo, unconsciously almost, had suddenly
elevated their best citizen to the height his merit but not his modesty
claimed. And through that subtle attribute that attaches to such
elevations they were correspondingly proud of him.
The voters closed in behind the two and followed them into the town
house, mumbling surmises to account for this astonishing situation.
“Politics makes strange bedfellers, so they say,” observed Deacon
Burgess, squinting at the Squire and the feeble old man whom he was
leading, “but if them two there don’t have nightmares and git to kickin’
each other it will be somethin’ to be talked about in words that ain’t
laid down in the dictionary.”
But the surge into the town house was promptly succeeded by a rush for
outdoors. The bellow of band music summoned them.
Fully appreciating what the dramatic stood for, Hiram Look had timed
his arrival carefully. He wanted all the voters to witness it. His eight
horses drew the band chariot, whose gilt and glass were resplendent,
even through the mud-streakings. The showman drove, perched upon the
high seat, his new silk hat flashing in the March sun. But the hat was
dwarfed on that occasion.
Simon Peak sat beside him, and for the first time since Palermo had
known him Simon Peak was really erect. It was his initial appearance as
drum-major of the “Look Cornet Brass Band.” His trousers were white,
his coat was crimson, with huge yellow shoulder knots, and an absolutely
gigantic bearskin shako towered from his head. When the big waggon swung
into the town-house yard the voters got a peep at the new uniforms of
the bandmen and, inspired by the gorgeous spectacle and by the lively
music, broke into a cheer.
Hiram’s grim features relaxed. He wheeled his horses skilfully and
brought the big cart to a standstill opposite the crowded platform,
twisted the reins about the brake bar, arose and removed his hat.
The ruling passion of the mob is the same in Palermo as it is in the
metropolis.
“Speech!” yelled the crowd enthusiastically above the blare of the
instruments.
“It ain’t no time, gents, for speeches now and here,” said Hiram Look
in the first silence. “I only want to present to you, the voters of the
town of Palermo, your new brass band, with the tallest drum-major in
New England, if not in the whole world. It’s a band that no one can be
ashamed of. It has taken enterprise and hard work to _get_ it to goin’.
It needs a boost from the voters of this town to _keep_ it goin’. A word
to the wise is sufficient. This ain’t no time for speeches, as I’ve just
said, but I want to ask you, one and all, to show me and this band here
to-day that you appreciate it when a man comes into the place and lets
out a few reefs and tries to get the grand old town of Palermo sailin’
on a new tack.”
It was the younger men who cheered now, as they had cheered before.
The older voters, from natural gravity and other reasons of a personal
nature, were silent. Many of them went back into the town house
grumbling about “hitchin’ circus fol-de-rols on to a bus’ness town
meetin’.”
This faction, which was a very considerable one, glared when the band
marched in behind its Gargantuan major and set the windows to rattling
with one of its liveliest airs. In the close, low-ceiled room the uproar
of the instruments and the clamour of the drums made hideous din of the
music.
“I’ll be deefer’n a haddock if this keeps up,” growled Uncle Lysimachus
Buck to Marriner Amazeen. “There don’t seem to be no law and order to
nothin’ in this town nowadays. It strikes me it’s about time for P’lermo
to set down on Hime Look, and set down so hard that he won’t get the
creases out of him for awhile.”
The town clerk, a thin, hump-shouldered little man, stood beside a
rickety table on the platform, his huge cane poised ready to pound for
order, and waiting with manifest impatience for the band to finish. He
began to whack the table the moment the echoes of the music died away,
and while the voters were shuffling to their places on the settees read
the warrant for the meeting in a shrill voice.
Hiram Look had planned to win the first move that day and elect a
moderator from his own faction. The keynote of his canvass had been
“Give some one else a show!” His whole campaign had been an attempt to
stir factional feeling in town.
“It’s a mighty dead-and-alive place that let’s one clique run it year
after year and lead you all by the nose,” he had stormily argued. “You
might’s well have an emp’ror for life and be done with it.”
He had promptly won the element that is always jealous of those in
authority, almost as promptly enrolled the unstable element that is
ready to follow new gods when a band leads the procession, and after
a little effort had succeeded in convincing many voters, who had never
stopped to think of the matter before, that they were being cheated of
their rights of representation in town affairs. He had talked to them
until they were bitter with his own bitterness. But he did not let drop
one word of the sensation that he planned to precipitate.
The moment the clerk stopped reading “Wolf” Doughty was on his feet with
a fiery harangue that wound up in denunciation of the men who had bossed
the town so long. He declared that it was time for a new deal, and
nominated Deacon Burgess as moderator. The band attempted to play when
he finished, but the little clerk rapped it into silence, though he
split his table in doing so. The name of Deacon Burgess was uproariously
seconded by Hiram’s claque.
But Squire Phin had been prepared for just such an outbreak. He arose
and said that he would assume that Mr. Doughty’s remarks had reference
to him, who had served the town as moderator for so many years. He
reminded the voters that he had acted in the capacity because he had
annually been requested to preside by the unanimous voice of the voters.
He had always felt that others should share in this honour, he said, and
this year he should do what he had before intended to do--refuse the use
of his name.
There was so much of gentle rebuke in his tone, and in his air such
quiet dignity, that Doughty’s flaming speech became a piece of insolence
that the voters were manifestly anxious to repudiate.
At this psychological moment, foreseen by the Squire’s sagacity, one of
his lieutenants nominated the teacher of the high school at the upper
village, and the natural, sudden impulse of the meeting did the rest.
Deacon Burgess was snowed under.
Hiram Look, in the midst of his adherents, fully understood all the
guile under this apparently innocent manoeuvre, and twisted his trailing
moustache and glared at his brother with malice.
In a similar manner the rest of Hiram’s slate was broken. He had trained
his speakers to go against the opposition with all the force of their
lungs and their invective. But the opposition didn’t appear to be there.
It was like fighting the summer breeze with a park of artillery. The old
office-holders were no longer candidates. New ones appeared, introduced
in calm, earnest speeches--men against whom no word could be said. Under
such circumstances the assaults by Hiram’s cabal began to sound like
bombastic nonsense, and there was too much Yankee hard-headedness in
that town meeting to listen patiently.
Violent sentiments were greeted with laughter, and the men who persisted
in attacking the old régime were hooted down.
While the tellers were counting votes for the third selectman Hiram
signalled his band to play up. But the moderator ordered silence and
sent two constables to enforce his commands.
Hiram, endeavouring to shout remonstrance, was threatened with expulsion
from the hall. He had lost his grip on the situation.
His supporters had not deserted him, by any means, but they were too
confused to act in concert. The new men were better men than their own
candidates. They were nominated with a certain spontaneity that disarmed
the opposition. Each time the polling was in progress Hiram stood on
a settee waving handfuls of ballots and shouting the name of his
candidate. But many voters who accepted slips from him secretly dropped
them upon the sawdust floor at a word whispered to them as they filed
along toward the ballot box.
It was not until the meeting reached the election of a town treasurer
that the opposition saw its real opportunity.
The Squire, who had made no nominating speech up to this time, secured
recognition from the moderator before Hiram’s lieutenant could struggle
to his feet, even though the showman had reached over two settees and
thrust a broad hand against his back.
The lawyer walked to the little space before the platform and stood
there, his hands behind him, his expression amiable, yet with something
of that new determination in it that Palermo had just begun to note.
“The hankering for new brooms is a natural and proper one,
fellow-townsmen,” he said, “and I am glad that Palermo has shown so
much good sense here to-day. We have chosen an admirable board of town
officers up to this time, and I am sure that those still to be elected
will be just as good and true men. You are now to choose a treasurer for
the town. We have plenty of good material for other officers, but I
want to say to you earnestly I am convinced that we have only one man in
Palermo who by training and ability is suited to be our treasurer.
“It is an office that requires tact and good judgment, even though the
sums that pass through the hands of our treasurer are not large.
These qualifications are possessed in abundant measure by the present
incumbent of the office. But there is a personal reason why we should
reelect Judge Willard, and in a little town like ours--a neighbourhood,
you may call it, almost--a personal reason of this nature should
sway us. Judge Willard’s father and grandfather before him were town
treasurers. The office has become associated with the family name. It
will be recalled by you that no Willard has ever charged the town one
cent for his services. It is one of those peculiar cases where the
rule of rotation in office is overweighed by sentiment. I’ll confess
to having sentiment myself about this matter. I’d as soon be a party
to cutting down our big elm where Lafayette sat in the shade while his
dinner was being cooked at the old tavern.”
His face grew grave.
“I hardly think I need to state to the voters here to-day that the very
fact of my standing forth to make this plea for Judge Willard indicates
how necessary I think it is to put aside my personal feelings for the
sake of the town.”
The expression on the faces of the listeners showed that they fully
understood his allusion. It required no very close observation to see
that Phineas Look, appealing for his old enemy, had won the majority of
his townsmen to his side.
“I had heard that certain persons were planning to make a cowardly
attack on him here to-day, and I did not propose to have my attitude
toward him misunderstood, townsmen.”
The Squire shouted this.
“In Judge Willard’s presence I apologise for my frankness, but I say to
you that he is an old man, to whom certain small things--small honours,
if you care to say it--have much significance. I don’t believe the
voters of this town will venture to wound an old man by any lack of
generosity here to-day. I don’t believe they will listen to attacks made
on him to satisfy selfish spite. I ask you, therefore, to treat this
aged citizen with the consideration that is due to him. I ask you to
nominate him by acclamation.”
He put both of his hands out to them, palms up, and smiled upon them
with appeal in his eyes.
“That’s the way I feel about the town treasurer-ship, neighbours, and if
the most of you don’t feel that way, too, I shall be disappointed. Will
you not make it by acclamation?”
So accustomed were his townsmen to see the Squire at the head of their
meetings that there was a chorus of “Ayes!” A half dozen men popped up
and seconded his proposal. Squire Phin did not attempt to speak above
this clamour, but smilingly motioned toward the moderator and took his
seat beside Judge Willard.
The aged treasurer, during the time that the lawyer was speaking, sat
twisting his thin hands under his shawl. His head swayed from side to
side with a tremulousness that no one had observed in him before. His
eyes were fixed appealingly on the face of his sponsor.
“You set down!” roared a voice. The voters turned and beheld Hiram
shaking his fist at the man who was striving to present the name of the
opposition candidate. “Set down, I tell ye! I’ll ’tend to the rest of
this thing myself and do it right.”
“Question! Question!” shouted many voices.
But the showman was not to be choked off. He leaped upon a settee and
roared, vibrating his fists above his head, until by dint of bellowing
he had driven the others into silence.
“I’m a voter in this town, and I don’t propose to have bus’ness rammed
through without discussion. I know how some of you feel toward me. You
think that ev’rything I try to do I’m doin’ just to make trouble. You
give me the big end to h’ist ev’ry time. But I’m good for it!”
He brandished his long arms above their heads.
Again the voices broke out into cries of “Question! We want to vote!”
“Vote! Vote!” he screamed, unable to control his passion. He had
intended to lead up to his sensation more skilfully. In his rage he now
fired it at them like a bombshell.
“Vote for what? For a thief to be your town treasurer? For a man that
has stolen forty thousand dollars from this town? That’s what you’re
votin’ for. I can prove what I say. Now do you want to vote?”
He leaned far over, propping himself on the shoulders of the man in
front of him, and gave them look for look. His sound eye blazed.
He thrust out his arm and shook his long finger at the cowering Judge.
“Ask him how many town notes are out with his name on ’em!” he yelled.
“Ask him--your honest old town treasurer, who has skun you as he would
skin a woodchuck, who has cheated, has stolen------”
But now fifty men were on their feet howling threats and epithets at
him.
“What shall I do?” screamed the moderator, leaning from the platform
and appealing to the Squire.
“Tell the band to play! Pass the word. Tell the band to play,” the
lawyer replied. And the band, not understanding in that din of voices
from whom the order had emanated, struck into one of its most clamorous
selections, and kept on doggedly despite the hoarse objurgations of
Hiram. He finally stood up and wiped his dripping face and let them go
on. But he swore under his breath with the vigour of a captain whose own
guns had been trained on him.
While he stood there, high on the settee, waiting for the band to play
through to the end, Hiram singled out several men in the crowd with his
eye, and promptly on the heels of the last blare he shouted:
“Sumner Badger--you, there, Sum Badger! You, Ezra Mayo! You, Nelson
Clark! You are hidin’ town notes with Collamore Willard’s name on ’em.
You can’t stand up here in town meetin’ and say that you aren’t. This
town thinks it only owes two thousand. Ask those men, you voters!
They’ve let Collamore Willard have fifteen thousand between ’em. Ask
’em!”
He waited, and the assemblage turned amazed and inquiring gaze on the
men.
Badger stood up first.
“I’m free to say, and I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles, that there
ain’t a cent owin’ me from this town.”
“You’re an old liar,” yelled Hiram.
“I’ll bet you five thousand dollars, even money, and put it into the
hands of any one you say?” Badger shrieked excitedly. “And there’s a
taste of your own med’cine that you’ve been so willin’ to ladle out to
the rest of us. Put up or shet up!”
This sturdy retort caught Hiram napping, and his open mouth and the
confusion on his face showed it.
The other men whom he had called upon leaped up and made similar
overtures of wagers.
The crowd began to laugh boisterously.
For the first few moments the voters had wavered between shocked
astonishment and anger. But the town understood so well the showman’s
extravagances of speech and actions that on second thought this last
performance seemed only another of his prodigious bluffs. Now to behold
him badgered in the same fashion in which he had badgered Palermo, and
backing away from the bets, was too much for their risibilities. The
more they laughed the more utter became his confusion. The whole thing
had turned out so differently from what he expected.
“I’ll bet ye five thousand to two,” shrilled Badger, excited by his
success and by the applause. “And I’ll stump ye to bet! I’ll stump ye!”
The mirth broke out again, for Hiram pulled out his handkerchief and
scrubbed it over his reddening face.
“This has gone far enough, townsmen!” called the Squire. “It isn’t
seemly to conduct town affairs in this manner.”
He had mounted the platform, and his firm tones quieted them.
“It isn’t seemly, either, for an irresponsible person to lose his head
and make accusations that he cannot back up. It is a deplorable thing
that has just happened here, townsmen.”
They all became grave with his gravity.
“No personal feelings of my own shall check me from saying that a man
who stands up in a public place and perpetrates criminal libel deserves
the severest punishment that the law has for such a crime. But under the
circumstances I ask from you this one bit of forbearance: It is that
you will forget what this person has said here and allow him to go, on
condition that he will not repeat his offence, here or elsewhere. If
he does--” the Squire’s face grew hard and stern--“I will prosecute him
myself, brother though he be of mine.”
For a moment there was utter silence, and then, with callused palms and
thudding boots, the voters roared their applause.
Hiram strode off the settee and into the centre aisle, and was about to
speak, his face black with rage.
“Not another word, sir,” the Squire shouted. “Not one word, or I’ll
withdraw my protection.”
But Hiram whirled at the door on his way out, unable to repress the
furious indignation that surged to his lips. He began to understand
the manner in which he had been cheated out of his vengeance. His anger
shifted from the voters, who had so blindly followed, to the man who had
led them--and that man was his brother.
“I’ll bet ye ten thousand dollars to one that I know who lifted the lid
that let the old rat out of his trap,” he shouted. His eye flamed redly
on Phineas. “It took ready money to do it. It was your money, Phin Look!
Some of it was money that I earnt! Our old father turned in his grave
this day. I stand here before the whole of you and tell you, Phin Look,
that you are a----”
“Constables, put that man out of this meeting!” commanded the Squire in
stentorian tones, and three brawny men who had followed Hiram down the
aisle and appeared to be awaiting just such an order hustled the showman
out of doors with much alacrity.
Simon Peak marshalled the band behind him, and in a little while the big
waggon went rumbling out of the yard.
But the band did not play.
Later in the day, when this business was reached, the articles in the
warrant relating to the “Look Cornet Brass Band” and the investigation
of the accounts of the town treasurer, as well as the article requiring
bondsmen for the same, were killed by a hilarious viva voce vote.
On their homeward way, after a long pause, Squire Look said:
“Judge Willard, you have been able to see some of the visible results to
me for my share in helping you compound your felony. You are man enough
to understand what it means to go through a public scene like that with
a brother, who was right, even if he was misguided. I am ashamed to meet
him; I am almost ashamed to look my townsmen in the eye.”
“But you agreed that it would have been worse the other way,” quavered
the old man.
“There are people who talk of the right path,” broke out the lawyer
impatiently, “as though it were like this village road branching
from the four corners here; that all you need to do is to look at the
guide-board and go on. I may have got tangled up at that four corners
where you and I met the other day, Judge Willard, but I want to tell you
that I see a mighty straight road ahead of me now.”
He clutched the old man’s arm and spoke low so that the driver on the
other side of the leather flap might not hear.
“You have got to liquidate, Judge. You have got to put every cent
of property you have in the world into my hands in order that I may
untangle it. You may be town treasurer in name, but not one dollar of
the funds shall you handle. The widows and the orphans and the old folks
in this town must be paid to the last farthing. You are going out of
business---do you understand? You will resign the town treasurership
when I tell you to--and that will be when your books can be safely
turned over to some one else. You need not worry about exposure, for
the men who were paid and surrendered their town notes to me have their
tongues tied fast and solid by methods that I understand how to work.
Now for your own tongue! If you breathe one word to your daughter that I
supplied the money to square this thing, or that you owe me a cent,
I’ll drop you and your affairs as I’d drop a hot plate on to a brick
sidewalk. And you know what will happen then!” A moment later the Squire
checked the old man’s mingled promises and thanks with an impatient word
and sank back into a corner of the carriage. His ponderings could not
have been very satisfying, for he scowled and growled.