gravel behind his father's house,
and looked like a recently exhumed mummy.)

There was not the least evidence against us; and, indeed, we were wholly
innocent of the offence. The trick, as was afterwards proved, had been
played by a party of soldiers stationed at the fort in the harbor. We
were indebted for our arrest to Master Conway, who had slyly dropped a
hint, within the hearing of Selectman Mudge, to the effect that "young
Bailey and his five cronies could tell something about them signs."
When he was called upon to make good his assertion, he was considerably
more terrified than the Centipedes, though they were ready to sink into
their shoes.

At our next meeting it was unanimously resolved that Conway's animosity
should not be quietly submitted to. He had sought to inform against
us in the stagecoach business; he had volunteered to carry Pettingil's
"little bill" for twenty-four icecreams to Charley Marden's father; and
now he had caused us to be arraigned before justice Clapham on a charge
equally groundless and painful. After much noisy discussion, a plan of
retaliation was agreed upon.

There was a certain slim, mild apothecary in the town, by the name of
Meeks. It was generally given out that Mr. Meeks had a vague desire
to get married, but, being a shy and timorous youth, lacked the moral
courage to do so. It was also well known that the Widow Conway had not
buried her heart with the late lamented. As to her shyness, that was not
so clear. Indeed, her attentions to Mr. Meeks, whose mother she might
have been, were of a nature not to be misunderstood, and were not
misunderstood by anyone but Mr. Meeks himself.

The widow carried on a dress-making establishment at her residence on
the corner opposite Meeks's drug-store, and kept a wary eye on all the
young ladies from Miss Dorothy Gibbs's Female Institute who patronized
the shop for soda-water, acid-drops, and slate-pencils. In the afternoon
the widow was usually seen seated, smartly dressed, at her window
upstairs, casting destructive glances across the street--the artificial
roses in her cap and her whole languishing manner saying as plainly as a
label on a prescription, "To be Taken Immediately!" But Mr. Meeks didn't
take.

The lady's fondness, and the gentleman's blindness, were topics ably
handled at every sewing-circle in the town. It was through these two
luckless individuals that we proposed to strike a blow at the common
enemy. To kill less th