that they enforced during the first month they would have
had their hands full far longer than they dreamed. Week after
week sped by, summer ripened into fall, and fall faded into
winter, but Philemon came not. Little by little Janice's misconduct
ceased to be a general theme of village talk, and the
life at Greenwood settled back into its accustomed groove.
Even the mutter of cannon before Boston was but a matter of
newspaper news, and the war, though now fairly inaugurated,
affected the squire chiefly by the loss of the bondsman, for
whom he advertised in vain.

One incident which happened shortly after the proposed
elopement, and which cannot be passed over without mention,
was a call from Squire Hennion on Mr. Meredith. The master
of Boxely opened the interview by shaking his fist within a few
inches of the rubicund countenance of the master of Greenwood,
and, suiting his words to the motion, he roared: "May
Belza take yer, yer old--" and the particular epithet is best
omitted, the eighteenth-century vocabulary being more expressive
than refined--"fer sendin' my boy ter Boston, wheer,
belike, he'll never git away alive."

"Don't try to bully me!" snorted the squire, shaking his fist
in turn, and much nearer to the hatchet-face of his antipathy.
"Put that down or I'll teach ye manners! Yes, damn ye,
for the first time in your life ye shall be made to behave like a
gentleman!"

"I defy yer ter make me!" retorted Hennion, with unconscious
humour.