"I guess it muss be considabul like a funeral over't the store,
nights," observed Abner, grinning. "Gosh I sh'd like ter peek in an
see em a talkin on it over. Wal, turn about's fair play. They don'
feel no wuss nor we did."

"Won't thar be no more klectin taxes?" inquired Laban Jones.

"I guess thar won't be much more klectin roun' here 'nless the klector
hez a couple o' rigiments o' melishy tew help him dew it," replied
Abner.

"I dunno, baout that," said Ezra Phelps. "Thar's more'n one way ter
skin a cat."

"Thar ain't no way o' skinnin this ere cat 'cept with bagonets," said
Abner, decidedly, and a general murmur expressed the opinion that so
far as the present company was concerned government would have to
practice some preliminary phlebotomy on their persons before they would
submit to any further bleeding of their purses by the tax-collector.
Nothing pleased Ezra more than to get placed thus argumentatively at
bay, with the entire company against him, and then discomfit them all
at a stroke. The general expression of dissent with which his previous
remark was received, seemed actually to please him. He stood looking
at Abner for a moment, without speaking, a complacent smile just
curving his lips, and the sparkle of the intellectual combatant in
his eye. To persons of Ezra's disputatious and speculative temper,
such moments, in which they gloat over their victim as he stands within
the very jaws of the logic trap which they are about to spring, are
no doubt, the most delightful of life.