if you like we will
ask Ephraim Quidd. You know, his father is a lawyer, and he will tell
us in a minute. So when we go to school we will ask him, shall we?"

"With all my heart," said I. And so with that we began to dress
ourselves, and went downstairs to breakfast. I was so full of the
matter that I sat and thought of it all the time I was eating my food;
and at last my imagination painted the old woman sitting in a chair,
calling out, "I am no guy! I am no guy!" the mob laughing, and the
boys hurrahing so vividly that I burst into a fit of laughter myself.

"Why, Peter," said my father, "'what is the matter now?"

Instead of telling him I continued to laugh, till at last he grew very
angry with me, and ordered me from the breakfast-table. I then took my
hat and bag, and went off to school. Simon Sapskull--for that was my
cousin's name--soon followed me.

When he came up with me he said:

"I thought what you were laughing at. It will be good fun. Let us make
haste and see Quidd before he goes in. It will be good fun, won't
it?"

And here Master Simon jumped and capered about with delight.

When we came to the schoolyard there were several boys assembled and
Quidd among them. Simon immediately ran up to him.

"Quidd," said he, "I want to ask you a question. You know the law, do
you not? Your father is the town clerk, and you ought."

"I do know the law," said Quidd. "Have I not been bred to it? And is
not my father to be made Recorder next year?"

"Well, then, answer me this," said Simon. "Is there any law against
_seizing an old woman for a guy_?"

The next morning Sapskull and myself, with Thomas Hardy and half a
dozen other boys, met with a view to talk about the intended exploit.
We withdrew to the backyard of the schoolroom, and there, in a corner
where we thought we could not be overheard, we began to plot against
the liberty of Dame Clackett.

Hardy was one of the rarest boys for making fireworks I ever knew in
my life. He had bought a book called "Every Boy his own Squib-Maker,"
in which were directions for making squibs, crackers, rockets, Roman
candles, serpents, slow fire, blue lights, and other descriptions of
fireworks. This he nearly knew by heart. Sapskull said:

"Look in your book and see if there is not in it how to make a guy."

So Hardy looked all over the book, but to no purpose; there was no
description of a guy manufactory. It was of no consequence; we had a
guy in our head, and w