“Balance your partners! Gentlemen swing! All hands around!” sang out Uncle Billy.
The dancers were in great fettle. Billy Cook, boots and all, was doing gallantly. Captain Sam’s laugh could be heard clear to the woods beyond the pasture. Squire Brackett was actually breaking out in a smile. Henry Burns and his friends were gathered near the doorway, watching the surprising play of Billy Cook’s boots.
But at this happy moment something happened to Uncle Billy Peters. His fiddle-bow, scraping across the strings in one wild, discordant shriek, dropped from his hand. His half-articulated call for a position of the dance blended into a startled yell, that brought the dancing to an abrupt stop; while Uncle Billy, his fiddle discarded, had leaped from his seat and was now dancing about the stage and describing the most extraordinary gyrations, waving his arms in the air and slapping at his face and the back of his neck, as though his own music had driven him stark, staring mad.
“What on earth!”—ejaculated Billy Cook. He got no further. Something that felt like a fish-hook, half-way down his boot-leg, occupied his attention; and the next moment a dozen or more of the same animated fish-hooks were buzzing about his head.
Billy Cook made one frantic clutch at his boot-leg; and, failing to find relief, yanked the boot off. Swinging this wildly about his head, one foot bared and the other clattering, poor Billy fled from the hall.
The squire’s expansive smile faded away in an expression of anguish and wrathful indignation. Slapping madly at the bald patch at the crown of his head, and uttering fierce denunciations upon the author of the mischief, he ignominiously deserted his partner of the dance and likewise fled precipitately.
The campers had already scuttled before the storm, and in a twinkling the hall was cleared. The angry, buzzing swarm was in complete and undisputed possession.
“I’ll give five dollars to any one that will discover who did this outrage!” cried Squire Brackett, dashing across the road to where a group of dancers had gathered. “Where’s that Burns boy and that Harvey—and that little Warren imp? He had a hand in it, I’ll take my oath. Whoever they are, they’ll get one horsewhipping that they’ll remember for the rest of their lives. Get those horsewhips out of the wagons! We’ll teach the young rascals a lesson.”
The squire had not observed that still another group of stalwart fishermen had had a word with Dave Benson and Old Slade and had already, of their own accord, provided themselves with horsewhips.
The squire only knew, at this time, that a party of the men were off down the road, with a hue and cry. He did not know that his own son was fleeing before them on the wings of fear, and being fast overtaken by his pursuers, themselves borne onward on the wings of pain and wrath.