American flag?"

"Suppose I refuse?"

"We will pull your house down over your head. We will give you a coat of
tar and feathers, and remove you beyond the limits of the town. If you
ever come back, we will hang you to the nearest tree."

"Good Heaven! Is it possible that my fellow-citizens are
assassins--incendiaries!"

"Your answer, squire."

"For mercy's sake, husband, do what they ask," interposed his wife, who
had been an anxious listener in the adjoining room.

"I must do it," groaned the squire, speaking the truth almost for the
first time in forty-eight hours. "Alas! where is our boasted liberty of
speech!"

"Fudge! squire," replied Captain Barney, contemptuously. "If your friend
Jeff Davis should come to Massachusetts to-morrow, to preach a crusade
against the North, and to raise an army to destroy the free institutions
of the country, I suppose you think it would be an outrage upon free
speech to put him down. We don't think so. Up with the flag, squire."

"Fred, you may hang the flag out at the front window up stairs," said the
squire to his son.

"All right, squire. Now a few words more, and we bid you good night. You
may _think_ what you please, but if you utter another word of treason in
Pinchbrook during the term of your natural life, the party outside will
carry out the rest of the programme."

By this time Fred Pemberton had fastened the flag to one of his mother's
clothes poles, and suspended it out of the window over the porch. It was
hailed with three tremendous cheers by the multitude who were in waiting
to discipline the squire, and exorcise the evil spirit of treason and
secession.

The work of the evening was finished, not wholly to the satisfaction,
perhaps, of a portion of the younger members of the assemblage, who would
gladly have joined in the work of pillage and destruction, but much to the
gratification of the older and steadier portion of the crowd, who were
averse to violent proceedings.




CHAPTER IV.

THE COMMITTEE COME OUT, AND