le at the store and tavern.

Now, two years before this, Jerry Todd had for the first and only time
in his married life "put his foot down." Mrs. Todd had insisted on
making him a suit of clothes much against his wishes. When finished she
put them on him almost by main force, though his plaintive appeals would
have melted any but a Stover-of-Scarboro heart. The stuff was a large
plaid, the elbows and knees came in the wrong places, the seat was lined
with enameled cloth, and the sleeves cut him in the armholes.

Mr. Todd said nothing for a moment, but the pent-up slavery of years
stirred in him, and, mounting to his brain, gave him a momentary courage
that resembled intoxication. He retired, took off the suit, hung it over
his arm, and, stalking into the sitting-room in his undergarments,
laid it on the table before his astonished spouse, and, thumping it
dramatically, said firmly, "I--will--not--wear--them--clo'es!" whereupon
he fell into silence again and went to bed.

The joke of the matter was, that, all unknown to himself, he had
absolutely frightened Mrs. Todd. If only he could have realized the
impressiveness and the thorough success of his first rebellion! But
if he had realized it he could not have repeated it often, for so much
virtue went out of him on that occasion that he felt hardly able to
drive the stage for days afterward.

"I shall have to put down my foot agin," he said to himself on the
eventful morning when Pel presented him with the basket. "Dern my luck,
I've got to do it agin, when I ain't hardly got over the other time."
So, after an hour's plotting and planning, he made some purchases in
Biddeford and started on his return trip. He was very low in his mind,
thinking, if his wife really meditated upon warfare, she was likely to
inspect the stage that night, but giving her credit in his inmost heart
for too much common sense to use a broomstick,--a woman with her tongue!

The Midnight Cry rattled on lumberingly. Its route had been shortened,
and Mrs. Todd wanted its name changed to something less outlandish, such
as the Rising Sun, or the Breaking Dawn, or the High Noon, but her idea
met with no votaries; it had been, was, and ever should be, the Midnight
Cry, no matter what time it set out or got back. It had seen its best
days, Jerry thought, and so had he, for that matter. Yet he had been
called "a likely feller" when he married the Widder Bixby, or rather
when she married him. Well, the m