room after the cold outside were stinging his flesh.

"Well, I wish I had been there," he retorted, "somebody else would have
been knocked down and sat on if that had happened."

"Ah, so I said--so I said," chuckled old Adam. "Thar ain't many men with
sech a hearty stomach for trouble, I was jest sayin' to Solomon."

Bending over the fire, he lifted a live ember between two small sticks,
and placing it in the callous palm of his hand, blew softly on it an
instant before he lighted his pipe.

"What goes against my way of thinkin'," remarked Betsey Bottom, wiping
a glass of cider on her checked apron before she handed it to Abel, "is
that so peaceable lookin' a gentleman as Mr. Jonathan should begin to
start a fuss jest as soon as he lands in the midst of us. Them plump,
soft-eyed males is generally inclined to mildness whether they be men or
cattle."

"'Taint nothin' on earth but those foreign whims he's brought back an'
is tryin' to set workin' down here," said Solomon Hatch. "If we don't
get our backs up agin 'em in time, we'll find presently we don't even
dare to walk straight along the turnpike when we see him a comin'. A few
birds, indeed!--did anybody ever hear tell of sech doin's? 'Warn't them
birds in the air?' I ax, 'an' don't the air belong to Archie the same as
to him?'"

"It's because he's rich an' we're po', that he's got a right to lay
claim to it," muttered William Ming, a weakly obstinate person, to whose
character a glass of cider contributed the only strength.