“Who made that there law?”
“The trustees. You’d best do as I tell you, ’cause if they find out that you’ve got it, they’ll spill the last drop of it fur you.”
“They will, eh?” exclaimed Matt. “I’d like to see ’em try it on. They’d better not try to boss me, ’cause me an’ my boys have got rifles into the punt, an’ we know how to use ’em too. Them there trustees ain’t got no more right to say what I shall drink than they have to say what I shall eat. Besides, how are they goin’ to find out that I have got it?”
“I shan’t tell ’em, ’cause I’ve got enough to do without botherin’ my head with other folks’s business,” answered the guide, who knew by the tone in which they were uttered that there was a threat hidden under Matt Coyle’s last words. “But you can’t keep it hid from ’em, an’ they’re bound to find it out.”
And sure enough they did.
Having built his shanty and moved his household goods into it, Matt Coyle and his boys presented themselves before the manager of the Lambert House and demanded employment as guides and boatmen. That functionary, who did not know that there were any such disreputable looking people in town, gazed at them in surprise, and told them rather bluntly that he had nothing for them to do. The manager of the Mount Airy House told them the same thing. The hotel guides were neat in person and respectful in demeanor, and Matt and his boys were just the reverse. The managers would not insult their guests by giving them boats manned by such persons as they were. Matt and his boys were angry, of course, and after wasting the best portion of the day grumbling over their hard luck, they put the jug into the punt and started out on a fishing excursion. They came back with a good string, but the hotels and boarding-houses refused to purchase, because their guests, with the assistance of the guides, kept the tables well supplied.
Things went on in this way for a month, during which Matt and his boys had twice been thrust into the calaboose for attempting to “run the town” to suit themselves, and at the end of that time the trustees decided that he and his family were of no use in Mount Airy, and that they had better go somewhere else. On the day the lawn tennis party was held, a notice to Matt Coyle to pull down his shanty and vacate the ground of which he had taken unauthorized possession, was given to a constable, and Tom Bigden and his cousins happened along just as the officer had begun to read it to him. The boys knew that there was something going on in the settlement before they came within sight of it, for when the officer took the notice from his pocket the squatter declared that he would not have any papers served on him: and then followed a loud and angry altercation in which Matt Coyle and his family, the constable and half a dozen guides took part. Tom and his companions quickened their pace to a run, and arrived upon the scene just in time to hear the squatter say, in savage tones:
“I know what’s into that there paper, an’ I tell you agin that I won’t listen to it. Some of them rich fellers up there on the hill want me to go away from here, but I tell you I won’t do it. I’ve got just as much right—”
“Keep still, can’t you?” shouted the officer. He had to shout in order to make himself heard, for Matt Coyle’s voice was almost as loud as a fog whistle. “I am going to read this notice whether you listen or not.”
“No, I won’t listen,” roared the squatter, swinging his arms around his head. “I’ve got just as much right on this here ’arth as them rich folks up on the hill have. Where shall I go if I leave here?”