And, so saying, he left John's letter lying on
the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished
usher.

Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and
mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and
chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had
really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old
his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to
the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected,
and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an
extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain--generating
therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations--than to any
settled intention on Jack's part to pick a quarrel with him or evade
performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not
under the influence of hypochondria. And having this notion as to Jack's
motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village
lawyer's, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of
purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment--and without resorting to a
strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack's pranks at once recommended
him to adopt--he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours,
which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries.
"I'faith," said the Squire, "since the poor man has taken this mad fancy
into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore
him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire
it, before the Justices of the Peace at once: 'Tis a hundred to one but
he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a
decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when
he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit
with a good grace.'"

So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the
usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings,
who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused
performance of his contract with the Squire. Jack came on the day
appointed, attended by the attorney--though for that matter he might
have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all
equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills
and quirks from his youth upward. This, indeed, was probably the effect
of his old traini