Chapter 15

"There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a
penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make
it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common,
and, in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass."--JACK CADE.

Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of
Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in
the Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally
indignant at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone
the public had been permitted to frequent the place, and this too,
quite often, to his own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed
the subject temporarily from his mind, and was already engaged in his
ordinary pursuits. Not so, however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to
promise, he had attended the meeting; and now he seemed to regulate
all his movements by a sort of mysterious self-importance, as if the
repository of some secret of unusual consequence. No one regarded his
manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his secrets, and opinions, were
all of too little value, in the eyes of most of the party, to attract
peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic listener in Mr. Dodge,
happily; that person having been invited, through the courtesy of Mr.
Effingham, to pass the day with those in whose company, though very
unwillingly on the editor's part certainly, he had gone through so
many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became intimate, and to
have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and frequent
conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have fancied
their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.

But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was
lost on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the
Baronet, proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning's walk,
while the two Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily
journals, that were received from town each morning, with a most
provoking indifference. Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could
resist any longer; and, after exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain
effort to induce one of the two gentlemen to question them in
relation to the meeting of the previous night, the desire to be doing
fairly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request
was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As
the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his
kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment
so often named.

Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted,
Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from
Mr. Effingham that he was ready to