“Well, Harry, that's about what I meant; for I saw him sure enough, and knew, at once, that we had got to have him against us at town meeting, which makes our case rather doubtful. We felt quite sure, before this, of being able to carry a majority; and in that case, some of us counted on getting a vote to rescue your cattle, or, at least, putting them into the hands of our sheriff. [Footnote: During the period of anarchy, change, and discord, in this distracted town, each of the belligerent parties had their sheriff, or constable, and other town officers, and would yield obedience to the officers of their opponents only on compulsion, though the officers of the majority were not generally resisted, except, perhaps, in matters purely political.] And either of these ways would be the means, we thought, of saving your property, and, at the same time, be a plaguy sight more lawful than any authority they have for selling them. But now there's no saying how it will go. I expect hot work there to-morrow; and that minds me to ask if you heard whether help from the towns up the river is coming down to join us on the occasion?” “Yes, Tom Dunning came down with me, and he informed me that several others were on the way.” “Good. Tom himself, in matter of managing, will be almost a match for Peters, whether ghost or no ghost. But where is he?” “He stopped back at the Liberty Pole tavern.” “All happens right, then. I am bound there myself. We are going to hold a little meeting at the Pole, after folks are to bed, to make up our plans and arrangements for to-morrow. You can't go, I suppose.” “No, I must not think of it.” “But you will be at town meeting to-morrow?” “Quite uncertain. In the first place, I ought not to leave my sick mother; and in the next, my feelings are in such a state of bitterness, that I dare hardly trust myself in such a scene, lest I should do that which would cost me months of painful regret. No, Piper, in mercy to a desperate man, let me keep away. But here is Bart to go, if he choose, both to-night and tomorrow.” “Bart is agreeable to that, if Harry and mistress don't want him,” said the person just named, rousing up from the long-silent reverie in which he had been sitting before the fire apparently inattentive to the conversation of the others, which had been carried on in a low tone, at the opposite side of the room. “So here goes for the Pole to-night, and meeting to-morrow,” he added, taking down his gun from the pegs on which it was suspended, near the ceiling above, “What do you want to do with that, Bart?” asked Woodburn. “I want it for lining to my coat,” replied Bart. “If our coats had all been lined in that fashion, the first night there, at Westminster, we needn't have had to attend French's funeral, nor you been troubled about the papers they got out when you was in jail.”