At the word, Piper, gathering himself up like a ram for a butting match, made a lunge head foremost into the recoiling ranks of the tories, and, borne irresistibly forward by the force of the rushing phalanx behind, overthrew, prostrated, and shoved aside, all before him, till the whole column gained the interior, and came to a halt before the ballot-box.
“I protest against that fellow's voting!” exclaimed Peters, approaching the stand as Bart, from his lofty seat on Dunning's shoulders, was about to put in his vote, which was a simple yea written on a slip of paper, and handed up to him by some one stationed near the box to furnish the unsupplied. “I protest against such a glaring outrage! He is under age, and was very properly driven from the house.”
“Prove it! prove it!” shouted several of Bart's friends.
“You can't do it,” cried another, “and if you could, two of your party, who are under age, have voted already; 'tis a fact; deny it if you can!”
“In with it, Bart!” said Dunning, bending down to give the other a chance.
“Yes, in with it; for he shall vote!” responded the rest.
“He shall not vote!” vociferated Peters; “and if he attempts to do it; I'll blow his brains out!” he added, pulling out and levelling a pistol. Quick as thought, Bart threw open his over-coat, and, drawing from beneath it the light short gun there concealed, cocked, and brought it to his shoulder; while the threatening weapon of his foe was seen flying to a distant part of the room, from a sudden blow of Piper's cudgel, and its disarmed and nonplused owner slinking away out of the range of the suspicious-looking barrel still kept aimed at his head.
Amidst the loud cries of order, and the heated vociferations of both parties, now raised to condemn or defend the transaction, through the house, Bart, Dunning, and others of their company, who had not voted, now hastily deposited their votes, and retired unmolested.
Although the portion of the revolutionary party, whose movements we have been more particularly describing, acting on the supposed and probably actual frauds of their opponents, had thus secured Bart's vote, and the votes of two or three others, perhaps equally illegal, yet the event soon showed that their policy in so doing was a mistaken one, and calculated to defeat the very object they intended to promote; for, as will always be the result where one party attempts to adopt the wrongful measures of their opponents, the tories, now armed with the fact that they had detected the other party in a wrong more glaring, because more public, than any they had perpetrated, made use of the advantage with such effect as to bring over several, intending to support the resolutions, to change their intention, and go against them. And, in addition to this, by way of retaliating, and of making good at least all the ground lost by the questionable votes forced upon them, they brought forward every minor they could find approximating the size of a man, and boldly demanded their admittance to the polls. An opposition was, indeed, attempted to a measure so manifestly illegal, by the leaders of the other party; but they had become too much disarmed by the acts of their own partisans to produce any sensible effect; and their voices were soon drowned by the clamors of the tories, who now admitted the boys by acclamation. This, as will be anticipated, decided the contest. On counting the votes, the resolution was found to have been rejected by more than a dozen majority-a victory which the tories failed not to announce by shouts of exultation, which out-thundered those of their opponents in their late short-lived triumph. The friends of freedom, being thus caught in their own trap, or, at least, worsted by the indiscretion of their own friends, now pretty much yielded the contest: while the victorious Yorkers and tories had everything in their own way, electing their town officers, passing denunciatory and royal resolutions, and continuing their discussions unopposed till it was nearly dark, when the meeting broke up in noisy confusion.
“Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” was now heard crying the well-known voice of Constable Fitch, as he mounted a stump in the yard; while near by stood a gang of his confederates, hedging in Woodburn's cow and oxen, which the former had found the means to have on the spot, in readiness for the sale, the moment the assembly broke up. “Oyez! A cow and oxen, taken on execution, now about to be sold to the highest bidder, gentlemen. We will take the oxen first; as fine a yoke as ever drew plough Who will give us the first bid? Shan't dwell three minutes. Who bids, I say? One pound bid, gentlemen; one pound ten! one pound ten! and on Mr. Peters. Who bids higher?”