of Liberty that Driscoll
landed in had not a sober bird in it; in fact there was probably not an
entirely sober one in the auditorium. Driscoll was promptly and
indignantly flung on the heads of Sons in the next row, and these Sons
passed him on toward the rear, and then immediately began to pummel the
front row Sons who had passed him to them. This course was strictly
followed by bench after bench as Driscoll traveled in his tumultuous and
airy flight toward the door; so he left behind him an ever-lengthening
wake of raging and plunging and fighting and swearing humanity. Down went
group after group of torches, and presently above the deafening clatter
of the gavel, roar of angry voices, and crash of succumbing benches, rose
the paralyzing cry of "_fire!_"
The fighting ceased instantly; the cursing ceased; for one distinctly
defined moment, there was a dead hush, a motionless calm, where the
tempest had been; then with one impulse the multitude awoke to life and
energy again, and went surging and struggling and swaying, this way and
that, its outer edges melting away through windows and doors and
gradually lessening the pressure and relieving the mass.
The fireboys were never on hand so suddenly before; for there was no
distance to go this time, their quarters being in the rear end of the
market house, There was an engine company and a hook-and-ladder company.
Half of each was composed of rummies and the other half of anti-rummies,
after the moral and political share-and-share-alike fashion of the
frontier town of the period. Enough anti-rummies were loafing in quarters
to man the engine and the ladders. In two minutes they had their red
shirts and helmets on--they never stirred officially in unofficial
costume--and as the mass meeting overhead smashed through the long row of
windows and poured out upon the roof of the arcade, the deliverers were
ready for them with a powerful stream of water, which washed some of them
off the roof and nearly drowned the rest. But water was preferable to
fire, and still the stampede from the windows continued, and still the
pitiless drenching assailed it until the building was empty; then the
fireboys mounted to the hall and flooded it with water enough to
annihilate forty times as much fire as there was there; for a village
fire company does not often get a chance to show off, and so when it does
get a chance, it makes the most of it. Such citizens of that village as
were of a thoughtful and judicious temperament did