, 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,"