“P'raps we could a kerried it aout, an p'raps we should a kerflummuxed. Ye've got grit an I've got size,” pursued Abner. “Twuz wuth tryin on. I'm kinder sorry we ain't a gonter try it.” “What the devil do you mean, Abner? not going to try it?” “No, Perez, we ain't goin tew try it, leastways, not the same plan we callated, an we ain't a goin tew try it alone,” and he leaned over and hissed in Perez' ear: “The hull caounty o' Berkshire 's a gonter help us.” Perez looked at him with horror. He was not drunk; he must be going crazy. “What do you mean, Abner?” he said soothingly. “Ye think I don' know wat I be a talkin baout, don' ye, Perez? Wal, jess hole on a minit. A feller hez jess got in, a ridin 'xpress from Northampton, to fetch word that the people in Hampshire has riz, and stopped the courts. Fifteen hundred men, with Captain Dan Shays tew ther head, stopped em. Leastways, they sent word to the jedges that they kinder wisht they wouldn't hole no more courts till the laws wuz changed, and the jedges, they concluded that the 'dvice o' so many fellers with guns, wuz wuth suthin, so they 'journed.” “That means rebellion, Abner.” “In course it doos. An it means the Lord ain't quite dead yit. That's wat it means.” “But what's that got to do with Reub and George?” “Dew with em, why, man alive, don' ye unnerstan? Don' ye callate Berkshire folks haz got ez much grit ez the Hampshire fellers, an don' ye callate we haz ez much call to hev a grudge agin courts? Ye orter been daown tew the tavern tew see haow the fellers cut up wen the news come. T'was like a match dropping intew a powder bar'l. Tuesday's court day tew Barrington, an ef thar ain't more'n a thousand men on han with clubs an guns, tew stop that air court, wy, call me a skunk. An wen that air court's stopped, that air jail's a comin open, or it's a comin daown, one o' the tew naow.” CHAPTER SIXTH PEREZ DEFINES HIS POSITION We who live in these days, when press and telegraph may be said to have almost rendered the tongue a superfluous member, quite fail to appreciate the rapidity with which intelligence was formerly transmitted from mouth to mouth. Virgil's description of hundred tongued Rumor appeared by no means so poetical an exaggeration to our ancestors as it does to us. Although the express, bearing the news of the Northampton uprising did not reach Stockbridge tavern a minute before half-past seven in the evening, there were very few families in the village or the outlying farmhouses, which had not heard it ere bedtime, an hour and a half later. And by the middle of the following forenoon there was in all Southern Berkshire, only here and there a family, off on a lonely hillside, or in a hidden valley, in which it was not the subject of debate.