“Ask him how many town notes are out with his name on ’em!” he yelled. “Ask him—your honest old town treasurer, who has skun you as he would skin a woodchuck, who has cheated, has stolen———”
But now fifty men were on their feet howling threats and epithets at him.
“What shall I do?” screamed the moderator, leaning from the platform and appealing to the Squire.
“Tell the band to play! Pass the word. Tell the band to play,” the lawyer replied. And the band, not understanding in that din of voices from whom the order had emanated, struck into one of its most clamorous selections, and kept on doggedly despite the hoarse objurgations of Hiram. He finally stood up and wiped his dripping face and let them go on. But he swore under his breath with the vigour of a captain whose own guns had been trained on him.
While he stood there, high on the settee, waiting for the band to play through to the end, Hiram singled out several men in the crowd with his eye, and promptly on the heels of the last blare he shouted:
“Sumner Badger—you, there, Sum Badger! You, Ezra Mayo! You, Nelson Clark! You are hidin’ town notes with Collamore Willard’s name on ’em. You can’t stand up here in town meetin’ and say that you aren’t. This town thinks it only owes two thousand. Ask those men, you voters! They’ve let Collamore Willard have fifteen thousand between ’em. Ask ’em!”
He waited, and the assemblage turned amazed and inquiring gaze on the men.
Badger stood up first.
“I’m free to say, and I’ll swear it on a stack of Bibles, that there ain’t a cent owin’ me from this town.”
“You’re an old liar,” yelled Hiram.