“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.

CHAPTER V.

The attic chamber.

Squire Pemberton rushed down cellar.  He was very much excited, and forgot that he had been troubled with the rheumatism during the preceding winter.  When he opened the cellar door, he was considerably relieved to find that no brilliant light saluted his expectant gaze.  It was as cold and dark in the cellar as it had been when he sorted over the last of his Warren Russets, a few days before.

It was certain, therefore, that the house was not on fire; and, invigorated by this thought, he descended the stairs.  A strong current of fresh, cold air extinguished the light he carried.  As this was contrary to his usual experience when he went down cellar in the evening after an apple or a mug of cider, it assured him that there was a screw loose somewhere.  Returning to the room above, he procured a lantern, and proceeded to the cellar again to renew his investigations.

The squire felt the cold blast of the April air, and immediately made his way to the cellar door, holding the lantern up as high as his head, to ascertain the nature of the mischief which the fanatical abolitionists had perpetrated.  He saw that the cellar door was broken through.  The rotten boards lay upon the steps, and with another malediction upon the mob, he placed the lantern upon a barrel, and proceeded to repair the damage.  As he stepped forward, he stumbled against the body of the enterprising hero of this volume, who lay as calm and still as a sleeping child.