THE COMMITTEE COME OUT, AND TOM GOES IN.
While the committee which the loyal citizens of Pinchbrook had appointed
to conduct their case with Squire Pemberton were in the house, engaged in
bringing the traitor to terms, the younger members of the assemblage were
very impatient to know how matters were progressing. Thomas Somers was
particularly anxious to have the affair brought to a crisis. In vain he
and a few other of the young loyalists attempted to obtain a view of the
interior of the house, where the exciting interview was in progress.
Captain Barney, on shore as well as at sea, was a thorough disciplinarian.
Of course, he was aware that his proceedings were technically illegal;
that in forcing himself into the house of the squire he was breaking the
law of the land; but it seemed to him to be one of those cases where
prompt action was necessary, and the law was too tardy to be of any
service. He was, however, determined that the business should be done with
as little violence as possible, and he had instructed the citizens at the
bridge to do no needless injury to the property or the feelings of the
squire or his family.
When he entered the house, he had stationed three men at the door to
prevent any of the people from following him. He had also directed them
not to enter the yard or grounds of the house until he gave the signal.
These directions proved a great hardship to the boys in the crowd, and
they were completely disgusted when they saw the flag thrown loose from
the front window.
The mansion of Squire Pemberton was an old-fashioned dwelling, about a
hundred feet from the road. In front of it was a green lawn, adorned with
several large buttonwood trees. There was no fence to enclose what was
called the front yard. The crowd was assembled on this lawn, and agreeably
to the directions of the leader, or chairman of the committee, none of
them passed into the yard in the rear and at the end of the house, which
was separated from the lawn by a picket fence.
Boys are instinctively curious to know what is going on, and the "living
room" of the squire, in which the exciting conversation was taking place,
was in the rear of the house. The windows on the front were dark and
uncommunicative. The boys were restless and impatient; if there was to be
any fun, they wanted to see it. Thomas was as impatient as his fellows,
and being more enterprising than the others, he determined, while obeying
the instructions of Captain Barney in the spirit, to disobey them in the
letter.
He had been a sufferer to the extent of two great wales on the calves of
his legs by the treason of the squire, and no doubt he thought he ought to
be regarded as an exception to those who were called on to observe the
instructions of the chairman of the committee. Leaving the group of
inquiring minds near the front door of the house, he walked down the
driveway till he came to a rail fence, through which he crawled, and
entered the field adjoining the garden of the squire. His fellow-citizens,
men and boys, were too intently watching the house to heed him, and no one
noticed his enterprising movement.
From the field, he entered the garden, and made his way to the rear of the
house. But even here, he was doomed to disappointment, for Mrs. Pemberton
had drawn her curtains. Our hero was not, however, to be utterly defeated,
and as the curtains had not been fitted by an accomplished upholsterer,
there were openings on either side, through which he might command a full
view of the interior of the room.
Thomas proceeded slowly and cautiously to obtain a position which would
enable him to gratify his curiosity, and witness the humiliation of the
haughty squire. Beneath the window which, he had chosen to look through,
there was a cellar door, from which a pile of seaweed, placed upon it to
keep the frost out of the cellar, had just been removed. The adventurous
inquirer crept up the slippery boards, and gained the coveted position. He
could not only see the committee and the squire, but he could hear all
they said. He was perfectly delighted with the manner in which the captain
put the question to the squire; and when the latter ordered Fred to hang
out the flag, he was a little disposed to imitate the masculine occupants
of the hen-house, a short distance from his perch; but Tom, as we have
before intimated, had a very tolerable idea of the principles of strategy,
and had the self-possession to hold his tongue, and permit the triumphant
scene within to pass without a crow or a cheer.
The battle had been fought and the victory won; and though Tom felt that
he was one of the victors, he deemed it prudent, for strategical reasons,
to commence a retreat. The cellar doors, as we have before hinted, were
very slippery, having been thoroughly soaked with moisture while covered
with the seaweed. When the hero of this unauthorized reconnoissance
wheeled about to commence his retreat, his feet incontinently slipped up
upon the inclined surface of the doors, and he came down heavily upon the
rotten boards. This, in itself, would have been but an inconsiderable
disaster, and he might still have withdrawn from the inconvenient
locality, if circumstances had not conspired against him, as circumstances
sometimes will, when they ought to be conciliatory and accommodating. The
force with which Tom fell upon the decayed boards was too much for them,
and the unlucky adventurer became another victim to the treachery of
rotten wood, which has hurled so many thousands from time into eternity.
But Tom was not hurled so far as that on the present occasion, though for
all practical purposes, for the succeeding half hour, he might as well
have been a hundred fathoms under water, or beneath the wreck of a
twenty-ton locomotive at the bottom of the river. That cellar door was a
bad place to fall through, which may be accounted for on the supposition
that it was not made to fall through. In his downward progress, Tom had
unluckily struck his head against the side of the house; and when he
landed at the bottom of the stairs, he was utterly oblivious to all
distinctions between treason and loyalty. Tom was not killed, I need not
inform the ingenious reader, or this would otherwise have been the last
chapter of the story; but the poor fellow did not know whether he was dead
or alive.
In fact, he had not sense enough left to consider the question at all; for
there he lay, in the gloom of the traitor's dark cellar, silent and
motionless--a solemn warning to all our young readers of the folly and
wickedness of indulging an illegal and sinful curiosity. It may seem cruel
and inhuman in us to forsake poor Tom in this sad plight; but we must,
nevertheless, go up stairs, in order that the sufferer may be duly and
properly relieved in due and proper season.
When the committee of three, appointed by the indignant loyalists of
Pinchbrook, had completed their mission in the house of the squire, like
sensible men they proposed to leave; and they so expressed themselves,
through their spokesman, to the unwilling host. They put their hats on,
and moved into the front entry, whither they were followed by the
discomfited traitor. They had scarcely left the room before a tremendous
crash greeted the ears of that portion of the family which remained in the
apartment. This was the precise moment at which poor Tom Somers found
himself on the bottom of the cellar; or, to be entirely accurate, when he
lost himself on the bottom of the cellar.
Mrs. Pemberton heard the crash, and she very naturally concluded that the
hour of retribution had actually come; that the terrible mob had commenced
the work of destruction. To her "fear-amazed" mind it seemed as though the
whole side of the house had fallen in, and, for a moment, she confidently
expected the chimneys would presently go by the board, and the roof come
thundering down upon the devoted heads of her outraged family. Perhaps, at
that terrible moment, she wished her husband had been like other women's
husbands, a true and loyal man, cheering the old flag, and hurling
harmless anathemas at the graceless rebels.
But the chimney did not go by the board, nor the roof come thundering down
upon her head. There was not even a sound of destruction to be heard, and
the sides of the house seemed to be firm and decided in their intention to
maintain their perpendicular position. A few minutes later, when the
committee announced to the multitude the success of their undertaking, and
Fred had displayed the flag from the window, peal upon peal of stunning
huzzas saluted her ears, and the awful peril of the preceding moments
appeared to be averted. The squire, having closed and barricaded the
broken door as well as he could, returned to the room, with curses deep
and bitter upon his lips. He was not in the habit of swearing, but the
magnitude of the occasion seemed to justify the innovation, and he swore
hugely, roundly, awfully. He paced the room, ground his teeth, and stamped
upon the floor.
"Father, did you hear that terrible racket just now?" asked Mrs.
Pemberton. "I thought the side of the house had fallen in."
"What racket?" demanded the squire, pausing in his excited walk.
"I am sure they have broken something."
"It sounded as though it was down cellar," added Susan, the daughter.
"What was it?" asked the father.
"I don't know. It sounded like breaking boards. Do go down cellar, and
find out what it was."
"The scoundrels!" roared the squire, as he rushed up and down the room
again with the fury of a madman. "I'll teach them to break into my house!"
"Be calm, father," interposed Mrs. Pemberton, who, like most New England
mothers, called her husband by the title which belonged exclusively to the
children.
"Calm? How can I be calm? Don't you hear the ruffians shout and yell?"
"They are only cheering the flag."
The squire muttered a malediction upon the flag, which would probably have
procured for him a coat of tar and feathers, if the mob had heard it. Mrs.
Pemberton was silent, for she had never seen her husband so moved before.
She permitted him to pace the room in his frenzy till his anger had, in
some measure, subsided.
"I wish you would go down cellar and find out what that noise was," said
Mrs. Pemberton, as soon as she dared to speak again. "Perhaps some of them
are down there now. Who knows but they will set the house afire."
Squire Pemberton was startled by this suggestion, and, seizing the lamp,
he rushed down cellar to prevent so dire a calamity.