The people in the spring-house were abject.  That’s the only word for it.  Craven, somebody suggested later, and they were that, too.  They smiled sickly grins and tried to be defiant, and most of them tried to put down whatever they held in their hands and to look innocent.  If you ever saw a boy when his school-teacher asks him what he has in his mouth, and multiply the boy thirty times in number and four times in size, you’ll know how they looked.

Mr. Pierce never smiled.  He wouldn’t let them speak a word in defense or explanation.  He simply lined them up as he did at gym, and sent them, one by one, to the corner with whatever they had in their hands.  He made Mr. Jennings give up a bottle of anchovies that he’d stuffed in his pocket, and the bishop had to come over with a cheese.

And when it was all over, he held the door open and they went back to the house.  They fairly ducked past him in the doorway, although he hadn’t said a dozen words.  It was a rout.  The backbone of the rebellion was broken.  I knew that never again would the military discipline of Hope Springs be threatened.  Thoburn might as well pack and go.  It was Mr. Pierce’s day.

Mr. von Inwald was almost the last.  He stood by, sneering, with an open bottle of olives in his hand, watching the others go out.

Mr. Pierce held the door open and eyed him.

“I’ll trouble you to put that bottle with the others, in the corner,” Mr. Pierce said sternly.

They stood glaring at each other angrily.

“And if I refuse?”

“You know the rules here.  If you refuse, there is a hotel at Finleyville.”

Mr. von Inwald glanced past Mr. Pierce to where Doctor Barnes stood behind him, with his cauliflower ear and his pugilist’s shoulders.  Then he looked at the bottle in his hand, and from it to Miss Patty, standing haughtily by.

“I have borne much for you, Patricia,” he said, “but I refuse to be bullied any longer.  I shall go to the hotel at Finleyville, and I shall take the little olives with me.”  He smiled unpleasantly at Mr. Pierce, whose face did not relax.

He walked jauntily to the door and turned, flourishing the bottle.  “The land of the free and the home of the brave!” he sneered, raising the bottle in the air.  Standing jeering in the doorway, he bowed to Miss Patty and Mr. Pierce, and put an olive into his mouth.

But instantly he made a terrible face, and clapped a hand just in front of his left ear.  He stood there a moment, his face distorted—­then he darted into the night, and I never saw him again.

“Mumps!” Doctor Barnes ejaculated, and stood staring after him from the steps.

CHAPTER XXX

LET GOOD DIGESTION

There was no one left but Miss Patty.  As she started out past him with a crimson spot in each cheek Mr. Pierce put his hand on her arm.  She hesitated, and he closed the door on Doctor Barnes and put his back against it.  I had just time to slip back into the pantry and shut myself in.