Those who could not
find shelter behind their fellows, and could not escape save by a dead
run, pulled their hats over their eyes and looked on the ground, slyly
dropping their cudgels, meanwhile, in the grass. There was not a gun
to be seen.
With his head thrown back in the stiffest possible manner, his lips
pursed out, and throwing glances like lashes right and left, Woodbridge,
followed by the other selectmen, passed through the midst of the people,
until he reached the stone step before the tavern door. He stepped up
on this, and ere he opened his lips, swept the shame-faced assemblage
before him with a withering glance. What with those who had pulled
their hats over their eyes, and those who had turned their backs to
him in anxiety to avoid identification, there was not an eye that met
his. Abner himself, brave as a lion with his own class, was no braver
than any one of them when it came to encountering one of the superior
caste, to which he, and his ancestors before him, had looked up as
their rulers and leaders by prescription. And so it must be written of
even Abner, that he had somehow managed to get the trunk of the
buttonwood tree, which sheltered Obadiah, between a part at least of
his own enormous bulk, and Squire Woodbridge's eye.
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