which they were dealing out to his misdeeds.  And with this even, they were not satisfied.  As the perishable calicoes roared up and went down in the flames, as the pans and pots and cups melted away in the furnace heat, and the painted faces of the wooden clocks, glared out like those of John Rogers at the stake, enveloped in fire, the cries of the crowd were mingled in with a rude, wild chorus, in which the pedler was made to understand that he stood himself in a peril almost as great as his consuming chattels.  It was the famous ballad of the regulators that he heard, and it smote his heart with a consciousness of his personal danger that made him shiver in his shoes.  The uncouth doggrel, recited in a lilting sort of measure, the peculiar and various pleasures of a canter upon a pine rail.  It was clear that the mob were by no means satisfied with the small measure of sport which they had enjoyed.  A single verse of this savage ditty will suffice for the present, rolled out upon the air, from fifty voices, the very boys and negroes joining in the chorus, and making it tell terribly to the senses of the threatened person.  First one voice would warble

   “Did you ever, ever, ever!”—­

and there was a brief pause, at the end of which the crowd joined in with unanimous burst and tremendous force of lungs:—­

   “Did you ever, ever, ever, in your life ride a rail? 
      Such a deal of pleasure’s in it, that you never can refuse! 
    You are mounted on strong shoulders, that’ll never, never fail,
      Though you pray’d with tongue of sinner, just to plant you
                where they choose. 
    Though the brier patch is nigh you, looking up with thorny faces,
      They never wait to see how you like the situation,
    But down you go a rolling, through the penetrating places,
      Nor scramble out until you give the cry of approbation. 
    Oh! pleasant is the riding, highly-seated on the rail,
      And worthy of the wooden horse, the rascal that we ride;
    Let us see the mighty shoulders that will never, never fail. 
      To lift him high, and plant him, on the crooked rail astride. 
          The seven-sided pine rail, the pleasant bed of briar,
          The little touch of hickory law, with a dipping in the mire.

   “Did you ever, ever, ever,” &c.,

from the troupe in full blast!

The lawyer Pippin suddenly stood beside the despairing pedler, as this ominous ditty was poured upon the night-winds.

“Do you hear that song, Bunce?” he asked.  “How do you like the music?”

The pedler looked in his face with a mixed expression of grief, anger, and stupidity, but he said nothing.

“Hark ye, Bunce,” continued the lawyer.  “Do you know what that means?  Does your brain take in its meaning, my friend?”

“Friend, indeed!” was the very natural exclamation of the pedler as he shrank from the hand of the lawyer, which had been affectionately laid upon his shoulder.  “Friend, indeed!  I say, Lawyer Pippin, if it hadn’t been for you, I’d never ha’ been in this fix.  I’m ruined by you.”