ho presided.

"Well, you needn't make such a howling about it," said Jenkins,
wrathfully, and looking around him with the sullen ferocity of a chafed
bear. "I know jist as well how to keep order, I reckon, as any on you;
but I don't see how it will be out of order to lick a Yankee, or who can
hinder me, if I choose it."

"Well, don't look at me, Dick Jenkins, with such a look, or I'll have a
finger in that pie, old fellow. I'm no Yankee to be frightened by sich a
lank-sided fellow as you; and, by dogs, if nobody else can keep you in
order, I'm jist the man to try if I can't. So don't put on any shines,
old boy, or I'll darken your peepers, if I don't come very nigh plucking
them out altogether."

So spake another of the company, who, having been much delectified with
the trial, had been particularly solicitous in his cries for order.
Jenkins was not indisposed to the affray, and made an angry retort,
which provoked another still more angry; but other parties interfering,
the new difficulty was made to give place to that already in hand. The
imputation upon Jenkins, that his ignorance of the claims of the clock
to gentle treatment, alone, had induced it to speak thirty-one times,
and at length refuse to speak at all, had touched his pride; and, sorely
vexed, he retired upon a glass of whiskey to the farther corner of the
room, and with his pipe, nursing the fumes of his wrath, he waited
impatiently the signal for the wild mischief which he knew would come.

In the meanwhile, the examination of the culprit proceeded; but, as we
can not hope to convey to the reader a description of the affair as it
happened, to the life, we shall content ourselves with a brief summary.
The chair went on rapidly enumerating the sundry misdeeds of the Yankee,
demanding, and in most cases receiving, rapid and unhesitating
replies--evasively and adroitly framed, for the offender well knew that
a single unlucky word or phrase would bring down upon his shoulders a
wilderness of blows.

"You are again charged, Bunce, with having sold to Colonel Blundell a
coffee-pot and two tin cups, all of which went to pieces--the solder
melting off at the very sight of the hot water."

"Well, lawyer, it stands to reason I can't answer for that. The tin
wares I sell stand well enough in a northern climate: there may be some
difference in yours that I can't account for; and I guess, pretty much,
there is. Now, your people are a mighty hot-tempered people,