On the lawn were a number of men similarly masked, grouped about a fire over which was already suspended the tell-tale pot.  To this the squire was carried, his night-shirt roughly torn from his back; and while two held him, a coating of the hot tar was generously applied with a broom, amid screams of pain from the unfortunate, echoed in no minor key by Janice and the slave servants, all of whom had been wakened by the hubbub.  Meantime, one of the law-breakers had returned to the house, and now reappeared with Mrs. Meredith’s best feather-bed, which was hastily slashed open with knives, and the squire ignominiously rolled in the feathers, transforming that worthy at once to an appearance akin to an ill-plucked fowl of mammoth proportions.

Although, as already noted, the fences had disappeared from the face of the land, with the same timeliness which had been shown in the production of the mattress, a rail was now introduced upon the scene, and the miserable object having been hoisted thereon, four men lifted it to their shoulders.  A slight delay ensued while the squire’s ankles were tied together, and then, with the warning to him that, “If yer don’t sit right and hold tight, ye’ll enjoy yer ride with yer head down and yer toes up,” the men started off at a trot down the road.  Sharing the burden by turns, the squire was carried to Brunswick, where, daylight having come, he was borne triumphantly twice round the green, amid hoots and yells from a steadily growing procession, and then was finally ferried across the river and dumped on the opposite bank with the warning from the spokesman that worse would come to him if he so much as dared show his face again within the county.

Lack of apparel and an endeavour to revive Mrs. Meredith had kept Janice within doors during the actual tarring and feathering; but so soon as the persecutors set off for Brunswick, the girl left her now conscious though still dizzy mother, hastily dressed, and started in pursuit, the alarm for her father quite overcoming her dread of the masked rioters.  Try her best, they had too long a start to be overtaken, and when she reached the village, it was to learn from a woman to whom she appealed for information what Mr. Meredith’s fate had been.  Still suffering the keenest anxiety, the girl went to the ferryman’s house, and begged to be rowed across the river, but he shook his head.

“Cap’ Bagby ’s assoomed command, ontil we gits resottled, an’ his orders wuz thet no one wuz ter be ferried onless they hez a pass; so, ef yer set on followin’ yer dad, it ’s him yer must see.  I guess he ain’t far from the tavern.”

This proved a correct inference, for Joe, glass in hand, was sitting on a bench near the doorway, watching and quizzing the publican as that weather-cock laboured to unscrew the rings which suspended his sign in the air.

“Who ’s name are you going to paint in this time, Si?” he questioned, as the girl came within hearing.