With this ultimatum Chester drove away as rapidly as he had come.

“I want to know!” said Sam Price, an exclamation peculiarly suited to his voice.  But nevertheless Sam might be counted on in each of these little rebellions.  He, too, had remained steadfast to Jacksonian principles, and he had never forgiven Jethro about a little matter of a state office which he (Sam) had failed to obtain.

Before he went to bed Jake Wheeler had written a letter which he sent off to the state capital by the stage the next morning.  In it he indicted no less than twenty of his fellow-townsmen for treason; and he also thought it wise to send over to Clovelly for Bijah Bixby, a lieutenant in that section, to come and look over the ground and ascertain by his well-known methods how far the treason had eaten into the body politic.  Such was Jake’s ordinary procedure when the bombs were fired, for Mr. Wheeler was nothing if not cautious.

Three mornings later, a little after seven o’clock, when the storekeeper and his small daughter were preparing to go to Brampton upon a very troublesome errand, Chester Perkins appeared again.  It is always easy to stir up dissatisfaction among the ne’er-do-wells (Jethro had once done it himself), and during the three days which had elapsed since Chester had flung down the gauntlet there had been more or less of downright treason heard in the store.  William Wetherell, who had perplexities of his own, had done his best to keep out of the discussions that had raged on his cracker boxes and barrels, for his head was a jumble of figures which would not come right.  And now as he stood there in the freshness of the early summer morning, waiting for Lem Hallowell’s stage, poor Wetherell’s heart was very heavy.

“Will Wetherell,” said Chester, “you be a gentleman and a student, hain’t you?  Read history, hain’t you?”

“I have read some,” said William Wetherell.

“I callate that a man of parts,” said Chester, “such as you be, will help us agin corruption and a dictator.  I’m a-countin’ on you, Will Wetherell.  You’ve got the store, and you kin tell the boys the difference between right and wrong.  They’ll listen to you, because you’re eddicated.”

“I don’t know anything about politics,” answered Wetherell, with an appealing glance at the silent group,—­group that was always there.  Rias Richardson, who had donned the carpet slippers preparatory to tending store for the day, shuffled inside.  Deacon Lysander, his father, would not have done so.

“You know somethin’ about history and the Constitootion, don’t ye?” demanded Chester, truculently.  N’Jethro Bass don’t hold your mortgage, does he?  Bank in Brampton holds it—­hain’t that so?  You hain’t afeard of Jethro like the rest on ’em, be you?”

“I don’t know what right you have to talk to me that way, Mr. Perkins,” said Wetherell.

“What right?  Jethro holds my mortgage—­the hull town knows it-and he kin close me out to-morrow if he’s a mind to—­”