On the morning following this extraordinary conversation, Jethro Bass and his wife departed for the state capital.  Listy was bedecked in amazing greens and yellows, and Jethro drove, looking neither to the right nor left, his coat tails hanging down behind the seat, the reins lying slack across the plump quarters of his horse—­the same fat Tom who, by the way, had so indignantly spurned the Iced Brook Seedlings.  And Jake Wheeler went along to bring back the team from Brampton.  To such base uses are political lieutenants sometimes put, although fate would have told you it was an honor, and he came back to the store that evening fairly bristling with political secrets which he could not be induced to impart.

One evening a fortnight later, while the lieutenant was holding forth in commendably general terms on the politics of the state to a speechless if not wholly admiring audience, a bomb burst in their midst.  William Wetherell did not know that it was a periodical bomb, like those flung at regular intervals from the Union mortars into Vicksburg.  These bombs, at any rate, never failed to cause consternation and fright in Coniston, although they never did any harm.  One thing noticeable, they were always fired in Jethro’s absence.  And the bombardier was always Chester Perkins, son of the most unbending and rigorous of tithing-men, but Chester resembled his father in no particular save that he, too, was a deacon and a pillar of the church.  Deacon Ira had been tall and gaunt and sunken and uncommunicative.  Chester was stout, and said to perspire even in winter, apoplectic, irascible, talkative, and still, as has been said, a Democrat.  He drove up to the store this evening to the not inappropriate rumble of distant thunder, and he stood up in his wagon in front of the gathering and shook his fist in Jake Wheeler’s face.

“This town’s tired of puttin’ up with a King,” he cried.  “Yes, King-=I said it, and I don’t care who hears me.  It’s time to stop this one-man rule.  You kin go and tell him I said it, Jake Wheeler, if you’ve a mind to.  I guess there’s plenty who’ll do that.”

An uneasy silence followed—­the silence which cries treason louder than any voice.  Some shifted uneasily, and spat, and Jake Wheeler thrust his hands in his pockets and walked away, as much as to say that it was treason even to listen to such talk.  Lem Hallowell seemed unperturbed.

“On the rampage agin, Chet?” he remarked.

“You’d ought to know better, Lem,” cried the enraged Chester; “hain’t the hull road by the Four Corners ready to drop into the brook?  What be you a-goin’ to do about it?”

“I’ll show you when I git to it,” answered Lem, quietly.  And, show them he did.

“Git to it!” shouted Chester, scornfully, “I’ll git to it.  I’ll tell you right now I’m a candidate for the Chairman of the Selectmen, if town meetin’ is eight months away.  An’, Sam Price, I’ll expect the Democrats to git into line.”