gs, but if you insist we can have a mattress
placed under the window."

"Thanks, Thoburn. It won't be necessary." The voice came from the door,
and a hush fell on the party. I slipped my bolt and peeped out. Framed
in the doorway was Mr. Pierce, with Doctor Barnes looking over his
shoulder.

The people in the spring-house were abject. That's the only word for it.
Craven, somebody suggested later, and they were that, too. They smiled
sickly grins and tried to be defiant, and most of them tried to put down
whatever they held in their hands and to look innocent. If you ever saw
a boy when his school-teacher asks him what he has in his mouth, and
multiply the boy thirty times in number and four times in size, you'll
know how they looked.

Mr. Pierce never smiled. He wouldn't let them speak a word in defense
or explanation. He simply lined them up as he did at gym, and sent them,
one by one, to the corner with whatever they had in their hands. He
made Mr. Jennings give up a bottle of anchovies that he'd stuffed in his
pocket, and the bishop had to come over with a cheese.

And when it was all over, he held the door open and they went back
to the house. They fairly ducked past him in the doorway, although he
hadn't said a dozen words. It was a rout. The backbone of the rebellion
was broken. I knew that never again would the military discipline of
Hope Springs be threatened. Thoburn might as well pack and go. It was
Mr. Pierce's day.

Mr. von Inwald was almost the last. He stood by, sneering, with an open
bottle of olives in his hand, watching the others go out.

Mr. Pierce held the door open and eyed him.

"I'll trouble you to put that bottle with the others, in the corner,"
Mr. Pierce said sternly.

They stood glaring at each other angrily.

"And if I refuse?"

"You know the rules here. If you refuse, there is a hotel at
Finleyville."

Mr. von Inwald glanced past Mr. Pierce to where Doctor Barnes stood
behind him, with his cauliflower ear and his pugilist's shoulders. Then
he looked at the bottle in his hand, and from it to Miss Patty, standing
haughtily by.

"I have borne much for you, Patricia," he said, "but I refuse to be
bullied any longer. I shall go to the hotel at Finleyville, and I shall
take the little olives with me." He smiled unpleasantly at Mr. Pierce,
whose face did not relax.

He walked jauntily to the door and turned, flourishing the bottle. "The
land of the free and the home of the brave!"