“Now damn me if—” began the squire.
“Come, come, squire,” interrupted an elderly man. “Yer’ve stud no chance of election from the fust, so what ’s the use of stickling?”
“I wash my hands of ye,” roared the squire. “Have whom ye want for what ye want. I’ve done with serving a lot of ingrates. Ye can come to me in the future on your knees, but ye’ll not get me to—”
“That’s just what we wants,” broke in Joe. "If you ’d always been so open to public opinion, we’d have had no cause for complaint against you. And now, squire, since a united land is what we wants, while your daughter gets the tea and a pen to sign the Association, do the thing up handsome by singing us the liberty song.”
“Burn me if I will,” cried the owner of Greenwood, like many another yielding big points without much to-do, but obstinate over the small ones.
“Is that tar about melted?” inquired Bagby.
“Jest the right consistency, Joe,” responded one of the pole-holders.
“Better sing it, squire,” advised Bagby. “We know you ’re not much at a song, but the sentiments is what we like.”
Once again the beset man looked to right and left, rage and mortification united. Then, with a remark below his breath, he sang in a very tuneless bass, that wandered at will between flat and sharp, with not a little falsetto:—
“Come join Hand in Hand, brave Americans all,
And rouse your bold Hearts at fair Liberty’s Call;
No tyrannous Acts shall suppress your just Claim
Or stain with Dishonour America’s Name—
In Freedom we’re born and in Freedom we’ll live.
Our Purses are ready—
Steady, Friends, Steady—
Not as Slaves, but as Freemen our Money we’ll give.”