Mr. Dodd’s two clerks saw him enter the store by the back door and he was very much interested in the new ploughs which were piled up in crates outside of it.  Then he disappeared into his office and shut the door, and supposedly became very much absorbed in book-keeping.  If any one called, he was out—­any one.  Plenty of people did call, but he was not disturbed—­until ten o’clock.  Mr. Dodd had a very sensitive ear, and he could often recognize a man by his step, and this man he recognized.

“Where’s Mr. Dodd?” demanded the owner of the step, indignantly.

“He’s out, Mr. Worthington.  Anything I can do for you, Mr. Worthington?”

“You can tell him to come up to my house the moment he comes in.”

Unfortunately Mr. Dodd in the office had got into a strained position.  He found it necessary to move a little; the day-book fell heavily to the floor, and the perspiration popped out all over his forehead.  Come out, Levi Dodd.  The Bastille is taken, but there are other fortresses still in the royal hands where you may be confined.

“Who’s in the office?”

“I don’t know, sir,” answered the clerk, winking at his companion, who was sorting nails.

In three strides the great man had his hand on the office door and had flung it open, disclosing the culprit cowering over the day-book on the floor.

“Mr. Dodd,” cried the first citizen, “what do you mean by—?”

Some natures, when terrified, are struck dumb.  Mr. Dodd’s was the kind which bursts into speech.

“I couldn’t help it, Mr. Worthington,” he cried, “they would have it.  I don’t know what got into ’em.  They lost their senses, Mr. Worthington, plumb lost their senses.  If you’d a b’en there, you might have brought ’em to.  I tried to git the floor, but Ezry Graves—­”

“Confound Ezra Graves, and wait till I have done, can’t you,” interrupted the first citizen, angrily.  “What do you mean by putting a bath-tub into my house with the tin loose, so that I cut my leg on it?”

Mr. Dodd nearly fainted from sheer relief.

“I’ll put a new one in to-day, right now,” he gasped.

“See that you do,” said the first citizen, “and if I lose my leg, I’ll sue you for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“I was a-goin’ to explain about them losin’ their heads at the mass meetin’—­”

“Damn their heads!” said the first citizen.  “And yours, too,” he may have added under his breath as he stalked out.  It was not worth a swing of the executioner’s axe in these times of war.  News had arrived from the state capital that morning of which Mr. Dodd knew nothing.  Certain feudal chiefs from the North Country, of whose allegiance Mr. Worthington had felt sure, had obeyed the summons of their old sovereign, Jethro Bass, and had come South to hold a conclave under him at the Pelican.  Those chiefs of the North Country, with their clans behind them as one man, what a power they were in