“What’s the reason you can’t?” roared the impatient old man, seizing Byron by the shoulder.
“Door is locked—I’m caught—coat-tail shut in! Look out! you’ll tear!” said Byron, anxiously holding the hinder part of his garment with one hand, and his uncle’s arm with the other.
“I should think ye was all a pack of fools!” exclaimed the squire, pushing on to the now open window, where he found several heads in advance of his own. “Le’ me come! make way here! Why don’t somebody in the street ketch him?”
“The’ ain’t nobody in the street!” giggled a youngster, taking in his head to make room for Peternot. “All the loafers are in here!”
Pressing forward, cane in hand, shouting, and thrusting several of the said loafers aside, Peternot reached the window, and, in attempting to put his head out, smashed his hat very neatly and thoroughly over his eyes. Having then with much ado got his head first out of the hat and then out of the window, he began to bellow forth, “Help! ho! fire!” And he whacked the clapboards outside with his stout cane. “Where is everybody?”
The testimony of the youngster as to all the village loafers being locked up in the room, was so near a literal fact, that not until this moment did anybody appear in answer to the cries from the window. But now three or four persons came running over the canal bridge, two or three out of the store opposite, and as many from the tavern up the street; while a fat little man rushed out of the grocery below, and turning up a face, round and red as a newly risen full moon, at the judge’s office window, screamed in a hoarse voice, “What’s the row up there?”
“Which way did that boy go?” demanded Peternot.
“What boy?” was answered back from the crowd that began to assemble below.
“Sellick’s prisoner! Run for him, some of you! He has locked us all in here! Hurry, and let us out! Help! ho!” And again the old man smote the resounding clapboards.
He had put on his hat once more; and now, accidentally knocked off by striking the window-sash, it fell, and meeting the arm and cane as they were rising vigorously to give the clapboards another blow, it flew in the air, sailed down by the corner of the grocery, and alighted softly and gently in the canal.