he Bastille is taken, but there are other fortresses still
in the royal hands where you may be confined.

"Who's in the office?"

"I don't know, sir," answered the clerk, winking at his companion, who
was sorting nails.

In three strides the great man had his hand on the office door and had
flung it open, disclosing the culprit cowering over the day-book on the
floor.

"Mr. Dodd," cried the first citizen, "what do you mean by--?"

Some natures, when terrified, are struck dumb. Mr. Dodd's was the kind
which bursts into speech.

"I couldn't help it, Mr. Worthington," he cried, "they would have it. I
don't know what got into 'em. They lost their senses, Mr. Worthington,
plumb lost their senses. If you'd a b'en there, you might have brought
'em to. I tried to git the floor, but Ezry Graves--"

"Confound Ezra Graves, and wait till I have done, can't you,"
interrupted the first citizen, angrily. "What do you mean by putting a
bath-tub into my house with the tin loose, so that I cut my leg on it?"

Mr. Dodd nearly fainted from sheer relief.

"I'll put a new one in to-day, right now," he gasped.

"See that you do," said the first citizen, "and if I lose my leg, I'll
sue you for a hundred thousand dollars."

"I was a-goin' to explain about them losin' their heads at the mass
meetin'--"

"Damn their heads!" said the first citizen. "And yours, too," he may
have added under his breath as he stalked out. It was not worth a swing
of the executioner's axe in these times of war. News had arrived from
the state capital that morning of which Mr. Dodd knew nothing.
Certain feudal chiefs from the North Country, of whose allegiance
Mr. Worthington had felt sure, had obeyed the summons of their old
sovereign, Jethro Bass, and had come South to hold a conclave under
him at the Pelican. Those chiefs of the North Country, with their
clans behind them as one man, what a power they were in the state! What
magnificent qualities they had, in battle or strategy, and how cunning
and shrewd was their generalship! Year after year they came down from
their mountains and fought shoulder to shoulder, and year after year
they carried back the lion's share of the spoils between them. The great
South, as a whole, was powerless to resist them, for there could be no
lasting alliance between Harwich and Brampton and Newcastle and Gosport.
Now their king had come back, and the North Country men were rallying
again to his standard. No wonder that L