“Why, lawyer, I ain’t the man to deny the truth of this transaction, you see; but, then, you must know, much depends upon the way you manage a clock.  A clock is quite a delicate and ticklish article of manufacture, you see, and it ain’t everybody that can make a clock, or can make it go when it don’t want to; and if a man takes a hammer or a horsewhip, or any other unnatural weapon to it, as if it was a house or a horse, why I guess, it’s not reasonable to expect it to keep in order, and it’s no use in having a clock no how, if you don’t treat it well.  As for its striking thirty-one, that indeed is something remarkable, for I never heard one of mine strike more than twelve, and that’s zactly the number they’re regulated to strike.  But, after all, lawyer, I don’t see that Squire Jenkins has been much a loser by the trade, seeing that he paid me in bills of the Hogee-nogee bank, and that stopped payment about the time, and before I could get the bills changed.  It’s true, I didn’t let on that I knowed anything about it, and got rid of the paper a little while before the thing went through the country.”

“Now, look ye, you gingerbread-bodied Yankee—­I’d like to know what you mean about taking whip and hammer to the clock.  If you mean to say that I ever did such a thing, I’ll lick you now, by the eternal scratch!”

“Order, order, Mr. Jenkins—­order!  The chair must be respected.  You must come to order, Mr. Jenkins—­” was the vociferous and urgent cry of the chairman, repeated by half a dozen voices; the pedler, in the meanwhile, half doubting the efficacy of the call, retreating with no little terror behind the chair of the dignified personage who presided.

“Well, you needn’t make such a howling about it,” said Jenkins, wrathfully, and looking around him with the sullen ferocity of a chafed bear.  “I know jist as well how to keep order, I reckon, as any on you; but I don’t see how it will be out of order to lick a Yankee, or who can hinder me, if I choose it.”

“Well, don’t look at me, Dick Jenkins, with such a look, or I’ll have a finger in that pie, old fellow.  I’m no Yankee to be frightened by sich a lank-sided fellow as you; and, by dogs, if nobody else can keep you in order, I’m jist the man to try if I can’t.  So don’t put on any shines, old boy, or I’ll darken your peepers, if I don’t come very nigh plucking them out altogether.”

So spake another of the company, who, having been much delectified with the trial, had been particularly solicitous in his cries for order.  Jenkins was not indisposed to the affray, and made an angry retort, which provoked another still more angry; but other parties interfering, the new difficulty was made to give place to that already in hand.  The imputation upon Jenkins, that his ignorance of the claims of the clock to gentle treatment, alone, had induced it to speak thirty-one times, and at length refuse to speak at all, had touched his pride; and, sorely vexed, he retired upon a glass of whiskey to the farther corner of the room, and with his pipe, nursing the fumes of his wrath, he waited impatiently the signal for the wild mischief which he knew would come.