"Do—do—anything? What—?" stammered the chairman of the trustees.
"Don't you know?" cried Miss Placentia, with an eloquent gesture of disdain. "A whole train of hogs has run off the embankment, and they are just pouring into the village, thousands and thousands of them, and now they are on our street tearing up my beautiful flowers."
Mr. Hemenway was a man who intended to do his duty, and he went out to the street at once. He was met by a deputation of hogs of such numbers that he believed that Miss Hannum's statement was literally true. He also began to feel that here was a condition of things not provided for in his Manual for Village Officers. He saw the hogs swarming down the street. He saw the people retreating into their houses after disastrous conflict with the enemy. Yet he kept bravely on up the street as far as the hay-scales, and there he met his fate.
Two hogs saw Mr. Hemenway approaching, and they immediately gave him their entire attention. They were the humorists of the herd, and they played with Mr. Hemenway. When he went toward the right, they gently swayed in the same direction. He went toward the left, and they imitated him, smiling very widely. He stopped, and the hogs stood patiently before him.
"Whey!" cried Mr. Hemenway, waving his hand.
Apparently the hogs were startled by so harsh a word, and they fell back a few paces. Then they darted forward so suddenly that Mr. Hemenway nearly fell over his own heels, and when he recovered himself he stood with his feet far apart. This was an opportunity not to be lost. One hog ran between Mr. Hemenway's feet and upset him. He came down just in time to take a short ride on the back of the other, and then rolled off into the street. It seemed to him that a hundred hogs gathered around him in a moment. With the energy of despair he sprang to his feet, ran hatless up the steps of the harness-shop, and mounted the very lifelike wooden horse which the harness-maker kept there as a sign.
Across the street a door was cautiously opened, and the head and shoulders of Gran'sir Pease appeared.
"Heman!" he cried, in a shrill, quavering voice, "go 'n' git the ol' Fo'th o' July cahnern and shewt 'em. It used to be 'round thar under Simon Hyle's shed." But this did not seem to Hemenway a feasible plan, especially as he knew that the "cahnern" had been at the bottom of the mill-pond for three years.