makes strange bedfellers, though."

"It's you ez hez changed sides, not me," responded the Tory. "I wuz
allers agin the state, an naow ye've come over tew my side."

Abner scratched his head.

"I swan, it doos look so. Anyhow, I be glad tew see ye tidday. I see
ye've got yer gun, Jabez. Ye muss be keerful. Loryers is so derndly
like foxes, that ye mout hit one on em by mistake."

There was a slight snicker at this, but the atmosphere was decidedly
too heavy for jokes. However boldly they might discourse at the tavern
of an evening, over their mugs of flip, about taking up arms and
hanging the lawyers, it was not without manifold misgivings, that
these law-abiding farmers found themselves on the point of being
actually arrayed against the public authorities in armed rebellion.
The absence of Israel Goodrich and Ezra Phelps, who were looked up to
as the most substantial in estate and general respectability of those
who inclined to the popular side, was moreover unfortunate, although
it was supposed that they would be present at Barrington.

Meshech, indeed, in spite of the earliness of the hour, was full of
pot-valor, and flourished his gun in a manner more perilous to those
about him than to the state authorities, but his courage reeked so
strongly of its source, that the display was rather discouraging than
otherwise to the sober men around. Paul Hubbard, who had come down
from the ironworks with thirty men or more, presently drew Abner aside
and said: