would not speak to his son Chester, who sat down just then in one of the
rear slips. Chester had become an agitator, a Jacksonian Democrat, and an
outcast, to be prayed for but not spoken to.

We shall leave them their peace of mind for half an hour more, those
stanch old deacons and selectmen, who did their duty by their
fellow-citizens as they saw it and took no man's bidding. They could not
see the trackless roads over the hills, now becoming tracked, and the
bent figures driving doggedly against the storm, each impelled by a
motive: each motive strengthened by a master mind until it had become
imperative. Some, like Eben Williams behind his rickety horse, came
through fear; others through ambition; others were actuated by both; and
still others were stung by the pain of the sleet to a still greater
jealousy and envy, and the remembrance of those who had been in power. I
must not omit the conscientious Jacksonians who were misguided enough to
believe in such a ticket.

The sheds were not large enough to hold the teams that day. Jethro's barn
and tannery were full, and many other barns in the village. And now the
peace of mind of the orthodox is a thing of the past. Deacon Lysander
Richardson, the moderator, sits aghast in his high place as they come
trooping in, men who have not been to town meeting for ten years. Deacon
Lysander, with his white band of whiskers that goes around his neck like
a sixteenth-century ruff under his chin, will soon be a memory. Now
enters one, if Deacon Lysander had known it symbolic of the new Era. One
who, though his large head is bent, towers over most of the men who make
way for him in the aisle, nodding but not speaking, and takes his place
in the chair under the platform on the right of the meeting-pause under
one of the high, three-part windows. That chair was always his in future
years, and there he sat afterward, silent, apparently taking no part. But