"Don't ye come no nearer," called he. "This is my land. Don't ye set foot on it."
The Flat-Iron Lot was a triangular piece of ground, rich in drooping elms, and otherwise varied only by a great boulder looming up within the wall nearest the church. Nicholas paused for a moment where he was; then with a thought of being the better heard, he turned, ran up the rough side of the boulder, and faced his fellows. As he stood there, illumined by the rising moon, he seemed colossal.
"He'll break his infernal old neck!" said Brad Freeman admiringly. But no one answered, for Nicholas Oldfield had begun to speak.
"Don't ye set foot on my land!" he repeated. "Ye ain't wuth it. Do you know what this land is? It belonged to a man that settled in a place that knows enough to celebrate its foundin', but don't know enough to prize what's fell to it. Do you know what I was doin' of, when I tolled that bell? I'll tell ye. I tolled a hunderd an' ten strokes. That's the age of the bell you're goin' to throw aside to flatter up a man that made money out o' the war. A hunderd an' twelve years ago that bell was cast in England; a hunderd an' ten years ago 't was sent over here."
"Now, how's father know that?" whispered Hattie disparagingly.
"I've cast my vote. Them hunderd an' ten strokes is all the voice I'll have in the matter, or any matter, so long as I live in this God-forsaken town. I'd ruther die than talk over a thing like that in open meetin'. It's an insult to them that went before ye, an' fit hunger and cold an' Injuns. I've got only one thing more to say," he continued, and some fancied there came a little break in his voice. "When ye take the old bell down, send her out to sea, an' sink her; or bury her deep enough in the woods, so 't nobody'll git at her till the Judgment Day."
With one descending step, he seemed to melt away into the darkness; and though every one stood quite still, expectant, there was no sound, save that of the crickets and the night. He had gone, and left them trembling. Well as they knew him, he had all the effect of some strange herald, freighted with wisdom from another sphere.
"Well, I swear!" said Brad Freeman, at length, and as if a word could shiver the spell, men and woman turned silently about and went down the hill. When they reached a lower plane, they stopped to talk a little, and once indoors, discussion had its way. Young Nick and Hattie had walked side by side, feeling that the eyes of the town were on them, reading their emblazoned names. But Mary marched behind them, solemnly and alone. She held her head very high, knowing what her kinsfolk thought: that gran'ther had disgraced them. A passionate protest rose within her.
That night, everybody watched the old house in the shade of the poplars, to see if Nicholas had "lighted up." But the windows lay dark, and little Mary, slipping over across the orchard, when her mother thought her safe in bed, tried the door in vain. She pushed at it wildly, and then ran round to the front, charging against the sentinel hollyhocks, and letting the knocker fall with a desperate and repeated clang. The noise she had herself evoked frightened her more than the stillness, and she fled home again, crying softly, and pursued by all the unresponsive presences of night.
For weeks Tiverton lay in a state of hushed expectancy; one miracle seemed to promise another. But Nicholas Oldfield's house was really closed; the windows shone blankly at men and women who passed, interrogating it. Young Nick and his Hattie had nothing to say, after Hattie's one unguarded admission that she didn't know what possessed father. The village felt that it had been arraigned before some high tribunal, only to be found lacking. It had an irritated conviction that, meaning no harm, it should not have been dealt with so harshly; and was even moved to declare that, if Nicholas Oldfield knew so much about what was past and gone, he needn't have waited till the trump o' doom to say so. But, somehow, the affair of clock and bell could not be at once revived, and a vague letter was dispatched to the prospective donor stating that, in regard to his generous offer, no decision could at the moment be reached; the town was too busy in preparing for its celebration, which would take place in something over two weeks; after that the question would be considered. The truth was that, at the bottom of each heart, still lurked the natural cupidity of the loyal citizen who will not see his town denied; but side by side with that desire for the march of progress, walked the spectre of Nicholas Oldfield's wrath. The trembling consciousness prevailed that he might at any moment descend again, wrapped in that inexplicable atmosphere of loftier meanings.