“What’s that?” snapped the squire.

“The meeting kind of thought things looked squawlish ahead, and that it would be best to be fixed for it, so I offered a resolution that the town buy twenty half-barrels of grain, and that—­”

“Grain!” exclaimed the squire.  “What in the ’nation can ye want with grain?”

“As we are all friends here, I’ll tell you confidential sort, that we put it thataways, so as the resolutions need n’t read too fiery, when they was published in the ‘Gazette.’  But the folks all knew as the grain was to be a black grain, that ’s not very good eating.”

“Why, this is treason!” cried Mr. Meredith.  “Gunpowder!  That ’s—­”

“Yes.  Gunpowder,” continued the spokesman, quite as much to the now concentrated crowd as to the questioner.  “We reckon the time ’s coming when we’ll want it swingeing bad.  And the meeting seemed to think the same way, for they voted that resolution right off, and appointed me and Phil Hennion and Mr. Wetman a committee to raise a levy to buy it.”

“Think ye a town meeting can lay a tax levy?” contemptuously demanded Mr. Meredith.  “None but the—­”

“’T is n’t to be nothing but a voluntary contribution,” interrupted Bagby, grinning broadly, “and no man ’s expected to give more than his proportion, as settled by his last rates.”

“An’ no man ’s expected ter give less, nuther,” said a voice back in the crowd.

“So if you’ve nine pounds seven and four with you, squire,” went on Bagby, “’t will save you a special trip over to pay it.”

“I’ll see ye all damned first!” retorted the squire, warmly.  “Why don’t ye knock me down and take my purse, and have done with it?”

“’T would be the sensible thing with such a tarnal cross tyke,” shouted some one.

“Everything fair and orderly is the way we work,” continued the committee man.  “But we want that nine pounds odd, and ’t will be odd if we don’t get it.”

“You’ll not get it from me,” asserted the squire, turning to walk away.

As he did so, half a dozen hands were laid upon his arms from behind, and he was held so firmly that he could not move.

“Shall we give him a black coat, Joe?” asked some one.

“No,” negatived Bagby.  “Let ’s see if being a ’babe in the wood’ won’t be enough to bring him to reason.

The slang term for occupants of the stocks was quite suggestive enough to produce instant result.  The squire was dragged back till his legs were tripped from under him by the frame, the bunch of keys, which suddenly reappeared, served to unlock the upper board, and before the victim quite realised what had transpired he was safely fastened in the ignominious instrument.  Regrettable as it is to record, Mr. Meredith began to curse in a manner highly creditable to his knowledge of Anglo-Saxon, but quite the reverse of his moral nature.