smacked a great cart-whip which he held in his hand, "making such a
hullabaloo, you women, you! that I suspect the squire will be sending out
to know if the village is on fire. Go home, will ye? High time indeed
to have the stocks ready, when you get squalling and conspiring under the
very nose of a justice of the peace, just as the French revolutioners did
afore they cut off their king's head! My hair stands on end to look at
ye." But already, before half this address was delivered, the crowd had
dispersed in all directions,--the women still keeping together, and the
men sneaking off towards the ale-house. Such was the beneficent effect
of the fatal stocks on the first day of their resuscitation. However, in
the break up of every crowd there must always be one who gets off the
last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny Fairfield, who had
mechanically approached close to the stocks, the better to hear the
oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less mechanically, on the
abrupt appearance of Mr. Stirn, crept, as he hoped, out of sight behind
the trunk of the elm-tree which partially shaded the stocks; and there
now, as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring to emerge in full
view of Mr. Stirn, and in immediate reach of the cartwhip, when the quick
eye of the right-hand man detected his retreat.

"Hallo, sir--what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up the stocks! just
like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I declares! What ha' you got in
your willanous little fist there?"

"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm. "Nothing--um!" said Mr.
Stirn, much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed more deliberately,
recognizing the pattern boy of the village, a cloud yet darker gathered
over his brow; for Mr. Stirn, who valued himself much on his learning,
and who, indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well as more wit than his
neighbours, had attained his present eminent station of life, was