Even the cribbage game under the barber shop was suspended, and the cribbage game was an institution.  It was the deacon’s one shortcoming, but even there he strove to get the better of the enemy, for the two men who were considered his only worthy antagonists at the game were Congregationalists.  The three bickered and quarreled and threatened each other with violence, but they played daily.  There were few afternoons when a ring of spectators did not surround the table, breathlessly watching the champions.  It was the great local sporting event, and who shall quarrel with the good deacon for touching cards in the innocent game of cribbage?  Certainly his pastor did not do so, nor did the fellow members of his congregation.  Indeed, there was even pride in his prowess.

But the game was discontinued, and Hamilcar Jones and Tilley Newcamp were loud in their excoriations of their late antagonist.  The Congregationalists had no hotter adherents than they, nor none who entered the conflict with more bitterness of spirit.  Scattergood saw to it that he encountered them on the evening before the momentous town meeting.

“Evenin’, Ham.  Evening Tilley.”

“Howdy, Scattergood?”

“How’s things lookin’ for to-morrer?”

“Mighty even, Scattergood.  If ‘twan’t for that ol’ gallus Pettybone, we’d git that sidewalk with votes to spare.”

“Um!...  If he was absent from the meetin’ things might git to happen.”

“Ho!  Tie him to home, and there wouldn’t even be a fight.”

“Got a wooden leg, hain’t he?”

“Wisht he had three.”

“Got two, one hangin’ in the harness room.  Harness room’s never locked.  If ’twas a boy could squirm through the window.”

“What of it?”

“Nothin’.  Jest happened to think of it....  Ever stop to think what a comical thing it ’u’d be if somebody was to ketch a wooden-legged man and saw his leg off about halfway up?  Jest lay him across a saw buck and saw her off while he hollered and fit.  Most comical notion I ever had.”

“Would make a feller laugh.”

“More ’special if his spare leg was stole away and he didn’t have nothin’ but the sawed-off one.  Sich a man would have difficulty gittin’ any place he wanted to git to....  G’-by, Ham.  G’-by, Tilley.  Hope the meetin’ comes out right to-morrer.”

Scattergood went inside and looked at his bank book.  In two months his deposits from sales had amounted to something like a hundred dollars.  The situation spelled nothing less than bankruptcy, but Scattergood replaced the book and waddled out to his piazza, where he sat in the cool of the evening, twiddling his toes and looking from the store of one competitor to the store of another, reflectively.

At a late hour a small boy named Newcamp delivered a bulky package to Scattergood, and vanished into the darkness.  The package was about large enough to contain a timber leg.