he
stocks had not been repaired before they were wanted.

Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the
squire more burly and authoritative and menacing than heretofore. Old
Gaffer Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they
were about, for that the squire had a wicked look in the tail of his
eye,--just as the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little
boy."

For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive
overt act of tyranny on the one hand or rebellion on the other. But on
the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in
the four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution
commenced. In the dead of that night personal outrage was committed on
the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest
riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob
of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off;
that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical
villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll-work,
"Dam the stocks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
with horror and alarm. And when the squire came into his dressing-room
at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
partikler to communicate about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
'sault."

The squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.

"Well?" cried the squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.

Mr. Stirn groaned.

"Well, man, what now?"

"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
Stirn; "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating--"

"Been what?"

"Semminating--"

"Disseminating, you blockhead,--disseminating what?"

"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right in medias res, and by
a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.

"Mr. Stirn!" cried the squire, reddening, "did you say, 'Damn the
stocks'?--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"

"Lord forbid, sir; that's what they say: that's what they have digged on
it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes,
and b