When I went to bed, by and by, I heard somebody snoring on the little porch under my window. The first sound that reached my ear at the break of dawn was the snoring of the same sleeper. I dressed and went below and found the constable in his coon-skin overcoat asleep on the porch with a long-barreled gun at his side. While I stood there the schoolmaster came around the corner of the house from the garden. He smiled as he saw the deacon.
"Talk about the placid rest of Egyptian gods!" he exclaimed. "Look at the watchful eye o' Justice. How well she sleeps in this peaceful valley! Sometimes ye can hardly wake her up at all, at all."
He put his hand on the deacon's shoulder and gave him a little shake.
"Awake, ye limb o' the law," he demanded. "Prayer is better than sleep."
The deacon arose and stretched himself and cleared his throat and assumed an air of alertness and said it was a fine morning, which it was not, the sky being overcast and the air dank and chilly. He removed his greatcoat and threw it on the stoop saying:
"Deacon, you lay there. From now on I'm constable and ready for any act that may be necessary to maintain the law. I can be as severe as Napoleon Bonaparte and as cunning as Satan, if I have to be."
I remember that through the morning's work the sleepy deacon and the alert constable contended over the possession of his stout frame.
The constable shouldered the gun and followed me into the pasture where I went to get the cow. I saw now that his intention was to guard me from further attacks. While I was milking, the deacon sat on a bucket in the doorway of the stable and snored until I had finished. He awoke when I loosed the cow and the constable went back to the pasture with me, yawning with his hand over his mouth much of the way. The deacon leaned his elbow on the top of the pen and snored again, lightly, while I mixed the feed for the pigs.
Mr. Hacket met us at the kitchen door, where Deacon Binks said to him:
"If you'll look after the boy to-day, I'll go home and get a little rest."