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IRONTOWN spent the rest of Sunday afternoon filled with that sense of monotony and endlessness which marked all Sunday afternoons. The villagers walked slowly along the hushed streets in their Sunday clothes; the merchants either slept away the time or sat about in front of their stores, like patient dogs ejected from their kennels awaiting the moment they would be allowed to return. The village girls yawned at home, wishing for beaux, for the telephone to ring, for a bit of scandal—anything.

Abner Teeftallow and the other labourers spent the afternoon in the garage retailing brackish anecdotes and inventing crude rural ironies about Perry Northcutt for breaking up their game. The energy bottled in their strong, dirty bodies moved them to some sort of reprisal for their defeat in baseball. They wanted something lawless, indecent, to set out their contempt for the whole churchly population. Their plans moved inevitably toward what was called, in technical legal phrase, "disturbing public worship." They meant to gather around the church during services that evening and fire pistols outside the house until the congregation became frightened and ran away. This would be exciting and retaliatory.

Abner went to supper at the Scovell House pondering whether or not to join the proposed batteau. The feature that restrained him was that he had no pistol and did not see how he could get one. He thought of going along with the boys and throwing stones at the church, but such pinch-penny methods of disturbing public worship made him ashamed. "No," he thought with decision, "if I kain't disturb 'em like a gentleman, I won't disturb 'em a-tall."