HE mass-meeting at Springtown was a most important event. It was held in the court-house in the centre of the few straggling houses which made up the hamlet. The entire Bishop family, including the servants, attended. Pole Baker brought his wife and all the children in a new spring-wagon. Darley society was represented, as the Springtown Gazette afterwards put it, by the fairest of the fair, Miss Dolly Barclay, accompanied by her mother and father.
The court-house yard was alive with groups of men eagerly talking over the situation. Every individual whose land was to be touched by the proposed road was on hand to protect his rights. Pole Baker was ubiquitous, trying to ascertain the drift of matters. He was, however, rather unsuccessful. He discovered that many of the groups ceased to talk when he entered them. “Some 'n' s up,” he told Alan and Miller in the big, bare-looking court-room. “I don't know what it is, but I smell a rat, an' it ain't no little one, nuther.”
“Opposition,” said Miller, gloomily. “I saw that as soon as I came. If they really were in favor of the road they'd be here talking it over with us.”
“I'm afraid that's it,” said Alan. “Joe Bartell is the most interested, and he seems to be a sort of ringleader. I don't like the way he looks. I saw him sneer at Wilson when he drove up just now. I wish Wilson hadn't put on so much style—kid gloves, plug hat, and a negro driver.”
“No, that won't go down with this crowd,” agreed Miller. “It might in the slums of Boston, but not with these lords of the mountains. As for Bartell, I think I know what ails him. He's going to run for the legislature and thinks he can make votes by opposing us—convincing his constituency that we represent moneyed oppression. Well, he may down us, but it's tough on human progress.”
Alan caught Dolly's eye and bowed. She was seated near her father and mother, well towards the judge's stand. She seemed to have been observing the faces of the two friends, and to be affected by their serious expressions. Adele sat at the long wood stove, several yards from her parents, who appeared quite as if they were in church waiting for service to begin. Abner Daniel leaned in the doorway opening into one of the jury-rooms. Wilson had given him a fine cigar, which he seemed to be enjoying hugely.
At the hour appointed for the meeting, to open, a young man who held the office of bailiff in the county, and seemed proud of his stentorian voice, opened one of the windows and shouted:
“Come in to court! Come in to court!” and the motley loiterers below began to clatter up the broad stairs and fall into the seats. Joe Bartell, a short, thick-set man in the neighborhood of fifty, with a florid face and a shock of reddish hair, led about twenty men up the aisle to the jury-benches at the right of the stand. They were the land-owners whose consent to grant the right of way was asked. Stern opposition was clearly written on the leader's brow and more or less distinctly reflected on the varying faces of his followers.