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The Skipper and the Skipped: Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul

by Holman Day · English · Gutenberg #16631 · 667,528 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Skipper and the Skipped: Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul

Author: Holman Day


        
Release date: September 1, 2005 [eBook #16631]
                Most recently updated: October 19, 2026

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16631

Credits: Produced by Ron Swanson


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED: BEING THE SHORE LOG OF CAP'N AARON SPROUL ***




[Frontispiece: THE SKIPPER TELLS OF "THE GLORIOUS, FASCINATING SEA."
See Chapter II.]




THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED

BEING THE SHORE LOG OF CAP'N AARON SPROUL


BY
HOLMAN DAY

AUTHOR OF
"THE RAMRODDERS"
"KING SPRUCE" ETC.


ILLUSTRATED


NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
MCMXI




BOOKS BY
HOLMAN DAY

THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED. Post 8vo . . $1.50
THE RAMRODDERS. Post 8vo  . . . . . . . . $1.50
KING SPRUCE. Ill'd. Post 8vo  . . . . . . $1.50
THE EAGLE'S BADGE. Ill'd. Post 8vo  . . . $1.25

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, N.Y.




COPYRIGHT, 1911. BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED FEBRUARY, 1911




THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED




I


Cap'n Aaron Sproul, late skipper of the _Jefferson P. Benn_, sat by
the bedside of his uncle, "One-arm" Jerry, and gazed into the
latter's dimming eyes.

"It ain't bein' a crowned head, but it's honer'ble," pleaded the sick
man, continuing the conversation.

His eager gaze found only gloominess in his nephew's countenance.

"One way you look at it, Uncle Jed," said the Cap'n, "it's a come-down
swifter'n a slide from the foretop the whole length of the boomstay.
I've been master since I was twenty-four, and I'm goin' onto
fifty-six now. I've licked every kind in the sailorman line, from
a nigger up to Six-fingered Jack the Portugee. If it wa'n't for--ow,
Josephus Henry!--for this rheumatiz, I'd be aboard the _Benn_ this
minute with a marlinespike in my hand, and op'nin' a fresh package
of language."

"But you ain't fit for the sea no longer," mumbled One-arm Jerry
through one corner of the mouth that paralysis had drawn awry.

"That's what I told the owners of the _Benn_ when I fit 'em off'm
me and resigned," agreed the Cap'n. "I tell ye, good skippers ain't
born ev'ry minute--and they knowed it. I've been turnin' 'em in ten
per cent. on her, and that's good property. I've got an eighth into
her myself, and with a man as good as I am to run her, I shouldn't
need to worry about doin' anything else all my life--me a single man
with no one dependent. I reckon I'll sell. Shipmasters ain't what
they used to be."

"Better leave it where it is," counselled Jerry, his cautious thrift
dominating even in that hour of death. "Land-sharks is allus lookin'
out sharp for sailormen that git on shore."

"It's why I don't dast to go into business--me that's follered the
sea so long," returned the skipper, nursing his aching leg.

"Then do as I tell ye to do," said the old man on the bed. "It may
be a come-down for a man that's had men under him all his life, but
it amounts to more'n five hundred a year, sure and stiddy. It's
something to do, and you couldn't stand it to loaf--you that's always
been so active. It ain't reskin' anything, and with all the passin'
and the meetin' folks, and the gossipin' and the chattin', and all
that, all your time is took up. It's honer'ble, it's stiddy. Leave
your money where it is, take my place, and keep this job in the
family."

The two men were talking in a little cottage at the end of a long
covered bridge. A painted board above the door heralded the fact that
the cottage was the toll-house, and gave the rates of toll.

"It's Providence that has sent you here jest as I was bein' took out
of the world," went on Uncle Jerry. "You're my only rel'tive. I'm
leavin' you the three thousand I've accumulated. I want to leave you
the job, too. I--"

A hoarse hail outside interrupted. The Cap'n, scowling, shuffled out
and came in, jingling some pennies in his brown hand.

"I feel like a hand-organ monkey every time I go out there," he
muttered.

"I tell ye," protested the old man, as earnestly as his feebleness
would permit, "there's lots of big business in this world that don't
need so long a head as this one does--bein' as how you're goin' to
run it shipshape. You need brains; that you do, nephy. It'll keep
you studyin' all the time. When you git interested in it you ain't
never goin' to have time to be lonesome. There's the plain hello folks
to be treated one way, the good-day folks, the pass-the-time-o'-day
folks, the folks that need the tip o' the hat--jest for politeness,
and not because you're beneath 'em," he hastened to add, noting the
skipper's scowl; "the folks that swing up to the platform, the folks
that you've got to chase a little, even if it is muddy; the folks
that pay in advance and want you to remember it and save 'em trouble,
the folks that pay when they come back, and the folks that never pay
at all--and I tell ye, nephy, there's where your work is cut out for
ye! I've only had one arm, but there's mighty few that have ever done
me out of toll, and I'm goin' to give ye a tip on the old bell-wether
of 'em all. I'm goin' to advise ye to stand to one side and let him
pass. He's--"

"And me a man that's licked every--"

"Hold on! He's diff'runt from all you've ever tackled."

In his excitement the old toll-gatherer attempted to struggle upon
his elbow. He choked. The nurse came and laid him back with gentle
remonstrance. Before he had regained his voice to talk more the
minister came, obeying a summons of grave import. Then came One who
sealed One-arm Jerry's lips and quieted the fingers that had been
picking at the faded coverlet as though they were gathering pennies.

And a day later, half sullenly, the Cap'n accepted the proposition
of the directors of the bridge company, who had said some very
flattering things to him about the reliability of the Sproul family.
He reflected that he was far enough from tide-water to avoid the
mariners who had known him in his former state. "I'll dock and repair
riggin'," he pondered. "It's a come-down, but I'll clear and cruise
again when the notion strikes me."

His possessions came promptly by express--his sea-chest, two parrots,
and a most amazing collection of curios that fairly transformed the
little cottage where the skipper, with seaman's facility in
housekeeping, set up bachelor's hall.

He grudgingly allowed to himself that he was going to like it. The
sun beamed blandly warm on the little bench before the toll-house.
His rheumatism felt better. People commented admiringly on such of
the curios as were displayed in the windows of the cottage. And when
the parrots--"Port" and "Starboard"--ripped out such remarks as
"Ahoy!" "Heave to!" "Down hellum!" and larded the conversation with
horrible oaths, the wayfarers professed to see great humor in the
performance.

In a little while the parrots would squall as soon as a traveller
appeared at the brow of the river hill or poked out from the dim depths
of the covered bridge. Even when the Cap'n was busy in his little
kitchen he never failed to receive due notice of the approach of
persons either in wagons or on foot.

"It will be a good man who runs toll on this bridge," he mused one
day, as he poked dainties between the bars of the parrots' cages.
"The old 'un was a good man in his day, like all the Sprouls. He didn't
have but one arm, but there wa'n't many that ever come it over him.
I've been thinkin' about one that did, and that he was scart of. If
there was ever a man that scart him, and kept him scart till the day
he died, then I'd like to see that same. It will be for me to show
him that the nephy has some accounts of the poor old uncle to square."

Up the slope where the road to Smyrna Bridge wound behind the willows
there was the growing rattle of wheels. The Cap'n cocked his head.
His seaman's instinct detected something stormy in that impetuous
approach. He fixed his gaze on the bend of the road.

Into sight came tearing a tall, gaunt horse, dragging a wagon equally
tall and gaunt. The horse was galloping, and a tall man in the wagon
stood up and began to crack a great whip, with reports like a pistol
fusillade.

Cap'n Sproul took three defiant steps into the middle of the road,
and then took one big step back--a stride that made his "rheumatiz
speak up," but a stride that carried him safely to his platform. The
team roared past. The big whip swished over his head, and the snapper
barked in his ear. He got one fleeting glimpse at the man who was
driving--a man with a face as hard as a pine knot. His lips were rolled
away from his yellow teeth in a grimace that was partly a grin, partly
a sneer. A queer, tall, pointed cap with a knob on its top was perched
on his head like a candle-snuffer on a taper. With a shrill yell and
more crackings of his whip he disappeared into the gloomy mouth of
the covered bridge, and the roaring echoes followed him.

The skipper stood looking first at the mouth of the bridge and then
at the sign above it that warned:

    THREE DOLLARS' FINE
    FOR DRIVING FASTER THAN A WALK

"As I was jest sayin'," he muttered, as the noise of the wheels died
away, "I should like to see that man--and I reckon as how I have."

He sat down under the woodbine that wreathed the little porch and
slowly filled his pipe, his gaze still on the bridge opening. As he
crooked his leg and dragged the match across the faded blue of his
trousers he growled:

"I dunno who he is, nor where he's come from, nor where he's goin'
to, nor when he expects to get back, but, as near as I can figger
it, he owes me ten cents' toll and three dollars' fine-money, makin'
a total of three ten, to be charged and collected, as I understand
it."

When he had got his pipe to going, after some little gruntings, he
pulled out a note-book and a stubby pencil and marked down the figures.
At the head of the page he scrawled:

   "Old Hurrycain, Dr."

"That name 'll have to do till I git a better one," he mused, and
then stood up to receive toll from a farmer who drove slowly out from
the bridge, his elbows on his knees, his horse walking slouchily.

"If it ain't no great output to you, mister, to tell, do you happen
to know who was the nub of that streak of wind and cuss-words that
jest went past here?"

The farmer bored him strangely a moment with his little gimlet eyes,
snorted out a laugh, clapped his reins, and started on.

"I heard ye was a joker!" he shouted back, his beard trailing over
his shoulder as he turned his head.

"There ain't no joke to this!" roared the skipper. But the man kept
on.

Another patron emerged from the bridge, digging from his trousers
pocket.

"You spoke it, didn't ye?" demanded the skipper. "Chain lightnin'
on wheels. Who is he?"

The man grinned amiably and appreciatively.

"Quite a hand to hector, ain't ye, toll-keeper? He was goin' so fast
I didn't know him, neither." He drove on, though the Cap'n hobbled
after him, shouting strong language, in which the parrots joined.

"You needn't try to make me think that there ain't nobody who don't
know the Kun'l," was the retort the man flung over his shoulder.

"Nice and accommodatin' class of paternage that's passin'," growled
the Cap'n, kicking an inoffensive chair as he came back to his
platform. "They talk about him as though he was Lord Gull and ruler
of the stars. Jest as though a man that had sailed deep water all
his days knowed all the old land-pirut's 'round here!"

It was a pedestrian--Old Man Jordan, bound to the village with a few
pats of butter in a bucket--that the skipper finally held up.

"Oh, sho!" said Old Man Jordan. "'Course ye know him. Every one does."

"I tell you I don't!" bawled the skipper.

"Why, yas you do."

"Say, look a-here, What's-your-name, I'm goin' to give ye ten seconds
to tell me the name of that critter."

He made a clutch to one side, and then remembered with a flush that
he was no longer in reach of a spike-rack.

"Why, that was Kun'l Gideon Ward," faltered Uncle Jordan, impressed
at last by the Cap'n's fury. "I thought ye knew."

"Thought! Thought! Why, ye never thought in your life. You only
thought you thought. I dunno no more who you mean by 'Kun'l Gideon
Ward' than as though you said General Bill Beelzebub."

"Why, yas you do--"

"There you go again! Do you mean to stand here and tell me I'm a liar?"

The glare in the seaman's eyes was too fierce to be fronted.

"Kun'l Gideon Ward is--is--wall, he's Kun'l Gideon Ward."

Jordan backed away suddenly at the oath the Cap'n ripped out.

"He owns more timber land than any other man in the county. He hires
more men than any one else. He ain't never been downed in a trade
or a fight yet. He's got double teeth, upper and lower, all the way
round, drinks kairosene in the winter 'cause it's more warmin' than
rum, and--and--"

"Well, what's that got to do with his runnin' toll on this bridge?"
demanded the Cap'n.

"Bridge piers hold up his logs, he says, and he ain't never goin'
to pay toll till the bridgemen pay him for loss of time on logs. It's
been what you might call a stand-off for a good many years. Best thing
is to let him run toll. That's what your uncle thought. I reckoned
you knew all about Kun'l Gid Ward. Why, everybody knows--"

"Say, you let up on that string right now and here," snorted the
Cap'n.

Old Man Jordan trotted away.

While the skipper was still pondering on the matter of Colonel
Ward--the meditation had lasted over into the next day--there was
a roar on the bridge, and the subject of his reflections passed in
a swirl of dust on his return trip. He was standing up in his wagon
as before, and he saluted the indignant toll-man with a flick of his
whip that started the dust from the latter's pea-jacket.

"He's been over to the home place to see his sister Jane," volunteered
Uncle Jordan, again on his way to the village with eggs. "She ain't
never got married, and he ain't never got married. Old Squire Ward
left his whole property to the two of 'em, and the Kun'l ain't ever
let it be divided. He runs the whole estate and domineers over her,
and she don't dast to say her soul's her own. If I was Jane I'd have
my half out and git married to some nice man, and git a little comfort
out'n life. He don't give her none--don't let her have the handlin'
of a cent of money. She's a turrible nice sort of woman. There's
risin' a hundred thousand dollars in her share, if the truth was known,
and there's been some pretty good men shine up around her a little,
but the Kun'l has run 'em away with a picked stick."

"Has, hey?"

"There ain't no Jack the Giant-Killers in these parts," sighed Old
Man Jordan, hooking his bucket upon his arm and shambling away.

For several days Cap'n Sproul was busy about the gable end of the
bridge during his spare moments and hours, climbing up and down the
ladder, and handling a rope and certain pulleys with sailor dexterity.
All the time his grim jaw-muscles ridged his cheeks. When he had
finished he had a rope running through pulleys from the big gate up
over the gable of the bridge and to the porch of the toll-house.

"There," he muttered, with great satisfaction, "that's the first
bear-trap I ever set, and it ain't no extra sort of job, but I reckon
when old grizzly goes ag'inst it he'll cal'late that this 'ere is
a toll-bridge."

Then came days of anxious waiting. Sometimes a teamster's shouts to
his horses up around the willows sent the Cap'n hobbling to the end
of the rope. An unusual rattling in the bridge put him at his post
with his teeth set and his eyes gleaming.




II


One day a mild and placid little woman in dove-gray came walking from
the bridge and handed over her penny. She eyed the skipper with
interest, and cocked her head with the pert demureness of a sparrow
while she studied the parrots who were waddling about their cages.

"I never heard a parrot talk, sir," she said. "I hear that yours talk.
I should dearly love to hear them."

"Their language is mostly deep-water flavor," said the Cap'n, curtly,
"and 'tain't flavored edsackly like vanilla ice-cream. There's more
of the peppersass tang to it than ladies us'ly enjoys."

The little woman gave a chirrup at the birds, and, to the skipper's
utter astonishment, both Port and Starboard chirruped back sociably.
Port then remarked: "Pretty Polly!" Starboard chirruped a few cheery
bars from "A Sailor's Wife a Sailor's Star Should Be." Then both
parrots rapped their beaks genially against the bars of the cages
and beamed on the lady with their little button eyes.

"Well, I swow!" ejaculated the Cap'n, rubbing his knurly forefinger
under his nose, and glancing first at the parrots and then at the
lady. "If that ain't as much of an astonisher as when the scuttle-butt
danced a jig on the dog-vane! Them two us'ly cusses strangers, no
matter what age or sect. They was learnt to do it." He gazed
doubtfully at the birds, as though they might possibly be
deteriorating in the effeminacies of shore life.

"I always was a great hand with pets of all kinds," said the lady,
modestly. "Animals seem to take to me sort of naturally. I hear you
have long followed the sea, Cap'n Sproul--I believe that's the name,
Cap'n Sproul?"

"Sproul it is, ma'am--Aaron for fore-riggin'. Them as said I follered
the sea was nearer than shore-folks us'ly be. Took my dunnage aboard
at fourteen, master at twenty-four, keel-hauled by rheumatiz at
fifty-six--wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that. I ain't stuck on
a penny-flippin' job of this sort."

"I should think it would be very pleasant after all the storms and
the tossings. And yet the sea--the sea, the glorious sea--has always
had a great fascination for me--even though I've never seen it."

"Nev--nev--never seen salt water!" This amazedly.

"Never." This sadly. "I've been kept--I've stayed very closely at
my home. Being a single lady, I've had no one to talk to me or take
me about. I have read books about the ocean, but I've never had any
chance to hear a real and truly mariner tell about the wonderful waste
of waters and describe foreign countries. I suppose you have been
'way, 'way out to sea, Cap'n Sproul--across the ocean, I mean."

She had timidly edged up and taken one of the chairs on the porch,
gazing about her at the curios.

"Well, ma'am," remarked the Cap'n, dryly, as he seated himself in
another chair, "I've waded across a cove wunst or twice at low water."

"I should love so to hear a mariner talk of his adventures. I have
never had much chance to talk with any man--I mean any sailor. I have
been kept--I mean I have stayed very closely at home all my life."

"It broadens a man, it sartain does, to travel," said the skipper,
furtively slipping a sliver of tobacco into his cheek and clearing
his throat preparatory to yarning a bit. The frank admiration and
trustful innocence in the eyes of the pretty woman touched him.

"I suppose you have been out at sea in some awful storms, Cap'n. I
often think of the sailormen at sea when the snow beats against the
window and the winds howl around the corner."

"The wu'st blow I ever remember," began the skipper, leaning back
and hooking his brown hands behind his head like a basket, "was my
second trip to Bonis Airis--general cargo out, to fetch back hides.
It was that trip we found the shark that had starved to death, and
that was a story that was worth speakin' of. It--"

There was a hoarse bellow of "Giddap!" up behind the willows. Then
into sight came galloping the tall, gaunt horse of Colonel Gideon
Ward. The Colonel stood up, smacking his whip.

With one leap the Cap'n was at his rope, and began to haul in hand
over hand.

The big gate at the mouth of the bridge squalled on its rusty hinges.

"You mustn't shut that gate--you mustn't!" shrieked the little woman.
She ran and clutched at his sturdy arms. "That's my brother that's
coming! You'll break his neck!"

The gate was already half shut, and the doughty skipper kept on
pulling at the rope.

"Can't help it, ma'am, if it's the apostle Paul," he gritted. "There
ain't nobody goin' to run toll on this bridge."

"It will kill him."

"It's him that's lickin' that hoss. 'Tain't me."

"It's my brother, I tell you!" She tried to drag the rope out of his
hands, but he shook her off, pulled the big gate shut, set his teeth,
clung to the rope, and waited.

The rush down the hill had been so impetuous and the horse was now
running so madly under the whip that there was no such thing as
checking him. With a crash of splintering wood he drove breast-on
against the gate, throwing up his bony head at the end of his scraggy
neck. At the crash the woman screamed and covered her eyes. But the
outfit was too much of a catapult to be stopped. Through the gate
it went, and the wagon roared away through the bridge, the driver
yelling oaths behind him.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul walked out and strolled among the scattered debris,
kicking it gloomily to right and left. The woman followed him.

"It was awful," she half sobbed.

"So you're Miss Jane Ward, be ye?" he growled, glancing at her from
under his knotted eyebrows. "Speakin' of your pets, I should reckon
that 'ere brother of yourn wa'n't one that you had tamed down fit
to be turned loose. But you tell him for me, the next time you see
him, that I'll plug the end of that bridge against him if it takes
ev'ry dum cent of the prop'ty I'm wuth--and that's thutty thousand
dollars, if it's a cent. I ain't none of your two-cent chaps!" he
roared, visiting his wrath vicariously on her as a representative
of the family. "I've got money of my own. Your brother seems to have
made door-mats out'n most of the folks round here, but I'll tell ye
that he's wiped his feet on me for the last time. You tell him that,
dum him!"

Her face was white, and her eyes were shining as she looked at him.

"Gideon has always had his own way, Cap'n Sproul," she faltered. "I
hope you won't feel too bitter against him. It would be awful--he
so headstrong--and you so--so--brave!" She choked this last out,
unclasping her hands.

"Well, I ain't no coward, and I never was," blurted the Cap'n.

"It's the bravest man that overcomes himself," she said. "Now, you
have good judgment, Cap'n. My brother is hot-headed. Every one knows
that you are a brave man. You can afford to let him go over the bridge
without--"

"Never!" the skipper howled, in his best sea tones. "You're the last
woman to coax and beg for him, if half what they tell me is true.
He has abused you wuss'n he has any one else. If you and the rest
ain't got any spunk, I have. You'll be one brother out if he comes
slam-bangin' this way ag'in."

She looked at him appealingly for a moment, then tiptoed over the
fragments of the gate, and hurried away through the bridge.

"You ain't no iron-clad, Kun'l Ward," muttered Sproul. "I'll hold
ye next time."

He set to work on the river-bank that afternoon, cutting saplings,
trusting to the squall of the faithful parrots to signal the approach
of passers.

But the next day, when he was nailing the saplings to make a truly
Brobdingnagian grid, one of the directors of the bridge company
appeared to him.

"We're not giving you license to let any one run toll on this bridge,
you understand," said the director, "but this fighting Colonel Ward
with our property is another matter. It's like fighting a bear with
your fists. And even if you killed the bear, the hide wouldn't be
worth the damage. He has got too many ways of hurting us, Cap'n. He
has always had his own way in these parts, and he probably always
will. Let him go. We won't get the toll, nor the fines, but we'll
have our bridge left."

"I was thinking of resigning this job," returned the Cap'n; "it was
not stirrin' enough for a seafarin' man; but I'm sort of gittin'
int'rested. How much will ye take for your bridge?"

But the director curtly refused to sell.

"All right, then," said the skipper, chocking his axe viciously into
a sapling birch and leaving it there, "I'll fill away on another
tack."

For the next two weeks, as though to exult in his victory, the Colonel
made many trips past the toll-house.

He hurled much violent language at the Cap'n. The Cap'n, reinforced
with his vociferous parrots, returned the language with great
enthusiasm and volubility.

Then came the day once more when the little woman sat down in a chair
in the shade of the woodbine.

"I took the first chance, Cap'n, while my brother has gone up-country,
to come to tell you how much I appreciate your generous way of doing
what I asked of you. You are the first man that ever put away selfish
pride and did just what I asked."

The seaman started to repudiate vigorously, but looked into her
brimming eyes a moment, choked, and was silent.

"Yes, sir, you're what I call noble, not to pay any attention to the
boasts my brother is making of how he has backed you down."

"He is, is he?" The Cap'n rolled up his lip and growled.

"But I know just how brave you are, to put down all your anger at
the word of a poor woman. And a true gentleman, too. There are only
a few real gentlemen in the world, after all."

The Cap'n slid his thumb into the armhole of his waistcoat and swelled
his chest out a little.

"There was no man ever come it over me, and some good ones have tried
it, ma'am. So fur as women goes, I ain't never been married, but I
reckon I know what politeness to a lady means."

She smiled at him brightly, and with such earnest admiration that
he felt a flush crawling up from under his collar. He blinked at her
and looked away. Starboard, with an embarrassing aptness that is
sometimes displayed by children, whistled a few bars of "A Sailor's
Wife a Sailor's Star Should Be."

"I don't mind owning up to you that my brother has imposed upon me
in a great many ways," said the little lady, her eyes flashing. "I
have endured a good deal from him because he is my brother. I know
just how you feel about him, Cap'n, and that's why it makes me feel
that we have a--a sort of what you might call common interest. I don't
know why I'm talking so frankly with you, who are almost a stranger,
but I've been--I have always lacked friends so much, that now I can't
seem to help it. You truly do seem like an old friend, you have been
so willing to do what I asked of you, after you had time to think
it over."

The Cap'n was now congratulating himself that he hadn't blurted out
anything about the bridge director and that sapling fence. It
certainly was a grateful sound--that praise from the pretty lady!
He didn't want to interrupt it.

"Now will you go on with that story of the storm?" she begged,
hitching the chair a bit nearer. "I want to hear about your
adventures."

She had all the instincts of Desdemona, did that pretty little lady.
Three times that week she came to the toll-house and listened with
lips apart and eyes shining. Cap'n Sproul had never heard of Othello
and his wooing, but after a time his heart began to glow under the
reverent regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more
naturally come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved,
and he--robbed of his mistress, the sea--yearned for just such
companionship as she was giving him. He had known that life lacked
something. This was it.

And when one day, after a stuttering preamble that lasted a full half
hour, he finally blurted out his heart-hankering, she wept a little
while on his shoulder--it being luckily a time when there was no one
passing--and then sobbingly declared it could never be.

"'Fraid of your brother, hey?" he inquired.

She bumped her forehead gently on his shoulder in nod of assent.

"I reckon ye like me?"

"Oh, Aaron!" It was a volume of rebuke, appeal, and affection in two
words.

"Then there ain't nothin' more to say, little woman. You ain't never
had any one to look out for your int'rests in this life. After this,
it's me that does it. I don't want your money. I've got plenty of
my own. But your interests bein' my interests after this, you hand
ev'rything over to me, and I'll put a twist in the tail of that Bengal
tiger in your fam'ly that 'll last him all his life."

At the end of a long talk he sent her away with a pat on her shoulder
and a cheery word in her ear.

It was Old Man Jordan who, a week or so later, on his way to the village
with butter in his bucket, stood in the middle of the road and tossed
his arms so frenziedly that Colonel Ward, gathering up his speed
behind the willows, pulled up with an oath.

"Ye're jest gittin' back from up-country, ain't ye?" asked Uncle
Jordan.

"What do you mean, you old fool, by stoppin' me when I'm busy? What
be ye, gittin' items for newspapers?"

"No, Kun'l Ward, but I've got some news that I thought ye might like
to hear before ye went past the toll-house this time. Intentions
between Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Miss Jane Ward has been published."

"Wha-a-at!"

"They were married yistiddy."

"Wha--" The cry broke into inarticulateness.

"The Cap'n ain't goin' to be toll-man after to-day. Says he's goin'
to live on the home place with his wife. There!" Uncle Jordan stepped
to one side just in time, for the gaunt horse sprung under the lash
as though he had the wings of Pegasus.

The Cap'n was sitting in front of the toll-house. The tall horse
galloped down the hill, but the Colonel stood up, and, with elbows
akimbo and hands under his chin, yanked the animal to a standstill,
his splay feet skating through the highway dust. The Colonel leaped
over the wheel and reversed his heavy whip-butt. The Cap'n stood up,
gripping a stout cudgel that he had been whittling at for many hours.

While the new arrival was choking with an awful word that he was
trying his best to work out of his throat, the Cap'n pulled his little
note-book out of his pocket and slowly drawled:

"I reckoned as how ye might find time to stop some day, and I've got
your account all figgered. You owe thirteen tolls at ten cents each,
one thutty, and thirteen times three dollars fine--the whole
amountin' to jest forty dollars and thutty cents. Then there's a gate
to--"

"I'm goin' to kill you right in your tracks where you stand!" bellowed
the Colonel.

The Cap'n didn't wait for the attack. He leaped down off his porch,
and advanced with the fierce intrepidity of a sea tyrant.

"You'll pay that toll bill," he gritted, "if I have to pick it out
of your pockets whilst the coroner is settin' on your remains."

The bully of the countryside quailed.

"You've stole my sister!" he screamed. "This ain't about toll I'm
talkin'. You've been and robbed me of my sister!"

"Do you want to hear a word on that?" demanded the Cap'n, grimly.
He came close up, whirling the cudgel. "You're an old, cheap,
ploughed-land blowhard, that's what you are! You've cuffed 'round
hired men and abused weak wimmen-folks. I knowed you was a coward
when I got that line on ye. You don't dast to stand up to a man like
me. I'll split your head for a cent." He kept advancing step by step,
his mien absolutely demoniac. "I've married your sister because she
wanted me. Now I'm goin' to take care of her. I've got thutty thousand
dollars of my own, and she's giv' me power of attorney over hers.
I'll take every cent of what belongs to her out of your business,
and I know enough of the way that your business is tied up to know
that I can crowd you right to the wall. Now do ye want to fight?"

The tyrant's face grew sickly white, for he realized all that threat
meant.

"But there ain't no need of a fight in the fam'ly--and I want you
to understand that I'm a pretty dum big part of the fam'ly after this.
Be ye ready to listen to reason?"

"You're a robber!" gasped the Colonel, trying again to muster his
anger.

"I've got a proposition to make so that there won't be no pull-haulin'
and lawyers to pay, and all that."

"What is it?"

"Pardnership between you and me--equal pardners. I've been lookin'
for jest this chance to go into business."

The Colonel leaped up, and began to stamp round his wagon.

"No, sir," he howled at each stamp. "I'll go to the poor-farm first."

"Shouldn't wonder if I could put you there," calmly rejoined the
Cap'n. "These forced lickidations to settle estates is something
awful when the books ain't been kept any better'n yours. I shouldn't
be a mite surprised to find that the law would get a nab on you for
cheatin' your poor sister."

Again the Colonel's face grew white.

"All is," continued the Cap'n, patronizingly, "if we can keep it all
in the fam'ly, nice and quiet, you ain't goin' to git showed up. Now,
I ain't goin' to listen to no more abuse out of you. I'll give you
jest one minute to decide. Look me in the eye. I mean business."

"You've got me where I'll have to," wailed the Colonel.

"Is it pardnership?"

"Yas!" He barked the word.

"Now, Colonel Ward, there's only one way for you and me to do bus'ness
the rest of our lives, and that's on the square, cent for cent. We
might as well settle that p'int now. Fix up that toll bill, or it's
all off. I won't go into business with a man that don't pay his honest
debts."

He came forward with his hand out.

The Colonel paid.

"Now," said the Cap'n, "seein' that the new man is here, ready to
take holt, and the books are all square, I'll ride home with you.
I've been callin' it home now for a couple of days."

The new man at the toll-house heard the Cap'n talking serenely as
they drove away.

"I didn't have any idee, Colonel, I was goin' to like it so well on
shore as I do. Of course, you meet some pleasant and some unpleasant
people, but that sister of yours is sartinly the finest woman that
ever trod shoe-leather, and it was Providunce a-speakin' to me when
she--"

The team passed away into the gloomy mouth of the Smyrna bridge.




III


Once on a time when the Wixon boy put Paris-green in the Trufants'
well, because the oldest Trufant girl had given him the mitten, Marm
Gossip gabbled in Smyrna until flecks of foam gathered in the corners
of her mouth.

But when Cap'n Aaron Sproul, late of the deep sea, so promptly, so
masterfully married Col. Gideon Ward's sister--after the irascible
Colonel had driven every other suitor away from that patient
lady--and then gave the Colonel his "everlasting comeuppance," and
settled down in Smyrna as boss of the Ward household, that event
nearly wore Gossip's tongue into ribbons.

"I see'd it from a distance--the part that happened in front of the
toll-house," said Old Man Jordan. "Now, all of ye know that Kun'l
Gid most gin'ly cal'lates to eat up folks that says 'Boo' to him,
and pick his teeth with slivers of their bones. But talk about your
r'yal Peeruvian ragin' lions--of wherever they come from--why, that
Cap'n Sproul could back a 'Rabian caterwouser right off'm
Caterwouser Township! I couldn't hear what was said, but I see Kun'l
Gid, hoss-gad and all, backed right up into his own wagon; and Cap'n
Sproul got in, and took the reins away from him as if he'd been a
pindlin' ten-year-old, and drove off toward the Ward home place. And
that Cap'n don't seem savage, nuther."

"Wal, near's I can find out," said Odbar Broadway from behind his
counter, where he was counting eggs out of Old Man Jordan's bucket,
"the Cap'n had a club in one hand and power of attorney from Kun'l
Gid's sister in the other--and a threat to divide the Ward estate.
The way Gid's bus'ness is tied up jest at present would put a knot
into the tail of 'most any kind of a temper."

"I'm told the Cap'n is makin' her a turrible nice husband," observed
one of the store loungers.

Broadway folded his specs into their case and came from behind the
counter.

"Bein' a bus'ness man myself," he said, "I come pretty nigh knowin'
what I'm talkin' about. Kun'l Gid Ward can never flout and jeer that
the man that has married his sister was nothin' but a prop'ty-hunter.
I'm knowin' to it that Cap'n Sproul has got thutty thousand in vessel
prop'ty of his own, 'sides what his own uncle Jerry here left to him.
Gid Ward has trompled round this town for twenty-five years, and
bossed and browbeat and cussed, and got the best end of every trade.
If there's some one come along that can put the wickin' to him in
good shape, I swow if this town don't owe him a vote of thanks."

"There's a movement on already to ask Cap'n Sproul to take the office
of first s'lec'man at the March meetin'," said one of the loafers.

"I sha'n't begretch him one mite of his popularity," vowed the
storekeeper. "Any man that can put Kun'l Gid Ward where he belongs
is a better thing for the town than a new meetin'-house would be."

But during all this flurry of gossip Cap'n Aaron Sproul spent his
bland and blissful days up under the shade of the big maple in the
Ward dooryard, smoking his pipe, and gazing out over the expanse of
meadow and woodland stretching away to the horizon.

Most of the time his wife was at his elbow, peering with a species
of adoration into his browned countenance as he related his tales
of the sea. She constantly carried a little blank-book, its ribbon
looped about her neck, and made copious entries as he talked. She
had conceived the fond ambition of writing the story of his life.
On the cover was inscribed, in her best hand:

    FROM SHORE TO SHORE

    LINES FROM A MARINER'S ADVENTURES

   _The Life Story of the Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul_

   _Written by His Affectionate Wife_

"I reckon that Providunce put her finger on my compass when I steered
this way. Louada Murilla," said the Cap'n one day, pausing to relight
his pipe.

He had insisted on renaming his wife "Louada Murilla," and she had
patiently accepted the new name with the resignation of her patient
nature. But the name pleased her after her beloved lord had
explained.

"I was saving that name for the handsomest clipper-ship that money
could build," he said. "But when I married you, little woman, I got
something better than a clipper-ship; and when you know sailorman's
natur' better, you'll know what that compliment means. Yes,
Providunce sent me here," continued the Cap'n, poking down his
tobacco with broad thumb. "There I was, swashin' from Hackenny to
t'other place, livin' on lobscouse and hoss-meat; and here you was,
pinin' away for some one to love you and to talk to you about something
sensibler than dropped stitches and croshayed lamp-mats. Near's I
can find out about your 'sociates round here, you would have got more
real sense out of talkin' with Port and Starboard up there," he added,
pointing to his pet parrots, which had followed him in his wanderings.
"We was both of us hankerin' for a companion--I mean a married
companion. And I reckon that two more suiteder persons never started
down the shady side--holt of hands, hey?"

He caught her hands and pulled her near him, and she bent down and
kissed his weather-beaten forehead.

At that instant Col. Gideon Ward came clattering into the yard in
his tall wagon. He glared at this scene of conjugal affection, and
then lashed his horse savagely and disappeared in the direction of
the barn.

"I read once about a skelington at a feast that rattled his dry bones
every time folks there started in to enjoy themselves," said the
Cap'n, after he watched the scowling Colonel out of sight. "For the
last two weeks, Louada Murilla, it don't seem as if I've smacked you
or you've smacked me but when I've jibed my head I've seen that ga'nt
brother-in-law o' mine standing off to one side sourer'n a home-made
cucumber pickle."

"It's aggravatin' for you, I know it is," she faltered. "But I've
been thinkin' that perhaps he'd get more reconciled as the time goes
on."

"Reconciled?" snapped the Cap'n, a little of the pepper in his nature
coming to the surface. "If it was any one but you little woman, that
talked about me as though I was death or an amputated leg in this
family, I'd get hot under the collar. But I tell ye, we ain't got
many years left to love each other in. We started pritty late. We
can't afford to waste any time. And we can't afford to have the edge
taken off by that Chinese image standin' around and makin' faces.
I've been thinkin' of tellin' him so. But the trouble is with me that
when I git to arguin' with a man I'm apt to forgit that I ain't on
shipboard and talkin' to a tar-heel."

He surveyed his brown fists with a certain apprehensiveness, as
though they were dangerous parties over whom he had no control.

"I should dretfully hate to have anything come up between you and
Gideon, Cap'n," she faltered, a frightened look in her brown eyes.
"It wouldn't settle anything to have trouble. But you've been about
so much and seen human nature so much that it seems as though you
could handle him different than with--with--"

"Poundin' him, eh?" Smiles broke over the skipper's face. "See how
I'm softened, little woman!" he cried. "Time was when I would have
chased a man that made faces at me as he done just now, and I'd have
pegged him into the ground. But love has done a lot for me in makin'
me decent. If I keep on, I'll forgit I've got two fists--and that's
something for a shipmaster to say, now, I'll tell ye! A man has got
to git into love himself to know how it feels."

Sudden reflection illuminated his face.

"Ain't old pickalilly--that brother of yourn--ever been in love?"
he asked.

"Why--why," she stammered, "he's been in--well, sometimes now I
think perhaps it ain't love, knowin' what I do now--but he's been
engaged to Pharlina Pike goin' on fifteen years. And he's been
showin' her attentions longer'n that. But since I've met you and
found out how folks don't usually wait so long if they--they're in
love--well, I've--"

"Fifteen years!" he snorted. "What is he waitin' for--for her to grow
up?"

"Land sakes, no! She's about as old as he is. She's old Seth Pike's
daughter, and since Seth died she has run the Pike farm with hired
help, and has done real well at it. Long engagements ain't thought
strange of 'round here. Why, there's--"

"Fifteen years!" he repeated. "That's longer'n old Methus'lum
courted."

"But Gideon has been so busy and away from home so much in the woods,
and Pharlina ain't been in no great pucker, seein' that the farm was
gettin' on well, and--"

"There ain't no excuse for him," broke in the Cap'n, with vigor. He
was greatly interested in this new discovery. His eyes gleamed.
"'Tain't usin' her right. She can't step up to him and set the day.
'Tain't woman's sp'ere, that ain't. I didn't ask you to set the day.
I set it myself. I told you to be ready."

Her cheek flushed prettily at the remembrance of that impetuous
courtship, when even her dread of her ogre brother had been overborne
by the Cap'n's masterful manner, once she had confessed her love.

"I know what love is myself," went on the Cap'n. "He don't know;
that's what the trouble is with him. He ain't been waked up. Let him
be waked up good and plenty, and he won't be standin' around makin'
faces at us. I see what's got to be done to make a happy home of this.
You leave it to me."

They saw the Colonel stamping in their direction from the barn.

"You run into the house, Louada Murilla," directed the Cap'n, "and
leave me have a word with him."

The Colonel was evidently as anxious as the Cap'n for a word.

"Say, Sproul," he gritted, as he came under the tree, "I've got an
offer for the stumpage on township number eight. Seein' that you're
in equal partners with me on my sister's money," he sneered, "I reckon
I've got to give ye figures and prices, and ask for a permit to run
my own business."

"Seems 'most as if you don't enj'y talkin' business with me,"
observed the Cap'n, with a meek wistfulness that was peculiarly
aggravating to his grouchy partner.

"I'd about as soon eat pizen!" stormed the other.

"Then let's not do it jest now," the Cap'n returned, sweetly. "I've
got something more important to talk about than stumpage. Money and
business ain't much in this world, after all, when you come to know
there's something diff'runt. Love is what I'm referrin' to. Word has
jest come to me that you're in love, too, the same as I am."

The gaunt Colonel glared malevolently down on the sturdy figure
sprawling in the garden chair. The Cap'n's pipe clouds curled about
his head, and his hands were stuffed comfortably into his trousers
pockets. His face beamed.

"Some might think to hear you talk that you was a soft old fool that
had gone love-cracked 'cause a woman jest as soft as you be has showed
you some attention," choked the Colonel. "But I know what you're
hidin' under your innocent-Abigail style. I know you're a
jill-poke."

"A what?" blandly asked Sproul.

"That's woods talk for the log that makes the most trouble on the
drive--and it's a mighty ornery word."

"Er--something like 'the stabboard pi-oogle,' which same is a
seafarin' term, and is worse," replied the Cap'n, with bland interest
in this philological comparison. "But let's not git strayed off'm
the subject. Your sister, Louada Murilla--"

The gaunt man clacked his bony fists together in ecstasy of rage.

"She was christened Sarah Jane, and that's her name. Don't ye insult
the father and mother that gave it to her by tackin' on another. I've
told ye so once; I tell ye so--"

"Louada Murilla," went on the Cap'n, taking his huge fists out of
his pockets and cocking them on his knees, not belligerently, but
in a mildly precautionary way, "told me that you had been engaged
to a woman named Phar--Phar--"

"Oh, give her any name to suit ye!" snarled the Colonel. "That's what
ye're doin' with wimmen round here."

"You know who I mean," pursued Sproul, complacently, "seein' that
you've had fifteen years to study on her name. Now, bein' as I'm one
of the fam'ly, I'm going to ask you what ye're lally-gaggin' along
for? Wimmen don't like to be on the chips so long. I am speakin' to
you like a man and a brother when I say that married life is what
the poet says it is. It's--"

"I've stood a good deal from you up to now!" roared Ward, coming close
and leaning over threateningly. "You come here to town with so much
tar on ye that your feet stuck every time you stood still in one place;
you married my sister like you'd ketch a woodchuck; you've stuck your
fingers into my business in her name--but that's jest about as fur
as you can go with me. There was only one man ever tried to advise
me about gitting married--and he's still a cripple. There was no man
ever tried to recite love poetry to me. You take fair warnin'."

"Then you ain't willin' to listen to my experience, considerin' that
I've been a worse hard-shell than you ever was in marriage matters,
and now see the errors of my ways?" The Cap'n was blinking up
wistfully.

"It means that I take ye by your heels and snap your head off," rasped
Ward, tucking his sleeves away from his corded wrists. "You ain't
got your club with you this time."

The Cap'n sighed resignedly.

"Now," went on the Colonel, with the vigorous decision of a man who
feels that he has got the ascendency, "you talk about something that
amounts to something. That stumpage on number eight is mostly cedar
and hackmatack, and I've got an offer from the folks that want
sleepers for the railroad extension."

He went on with facts and figures, but the Cap'n listened with only
languid interest. He kept sighing and wrinkling his brows, as though
in deep rumination on a matter far removed from the stumpage question.
When the agreement of sale was laid before him he signed with a
blunted lead-pencil, still in his trance.

"Northin' but a cross-cut saw with two axe-handles for legs," he said
to himself, his eyes on the Colonel's back as that individual stamped
wrathfully away. "Teeth and edge are hard as iron! It's no good to
talk mattermony to him. Prob'ly it wouldn't do no good for me to talk
mattermony to Phar--Phar--to t'other one. She couldn't ask him to
go git a minister. 'Tain't right to put that much onto a woman's
shoulders. The trouble with him is that he's too sure of wimmen. Had
his sister under his thumb all them years, and thought less and less
of her for stayin' there. He's too sure of t'other. Thinks nobody
else wants her. Thinks all he's got to do is step round and git her
some day. Ain't got no high idee of wimmen like I have. Thinks they
ought to wait patient as a tree in a wood-lot. Has had things too
much his own way, I say. Hain't never had his lesson. Thinks nobody
else don't want her, hey? And she can wait his motions! He needs his
lesson. Lemme see!"

With his knurly forefinger at his puckered forehead he sat and
pondered.

He was very silent at supper.

The Colonel, still exulting in his apparent victory, said many
sneering and savage things, and clattered his knife truculently on
his plate. Sproul merely looked at him with that wistful
preoccupation that still marked his countenance.

"He's a quitter," pondered the Colonel. "I reckon he ain't playin'
lamb so's to tole me on. He's growed soft--that's what he's done."

Ward went to sleep that night planning retaliation.

Sproul stayed awake when the house was quiet, still pondering.




IV


During the next few days, as one treads farther and farther out upon
thin ice to test it, the Colonel craftily set about regaining,
inch by inch, his lost throne as tyrant. Occasionally he checked
himself in some alarm, to wonder what meant that ridging of the
Cap'n's jaw-muscles, and whether he really heard the seaman's teeth
gritting. Once, when he recoiled before an unusually demoniac glare
from Sproul, the latter whined, after a violent inward struggle:

"It beats all how my rheumaticks has been talkin' up lately. I don't
seem to have no ginger nor spirit left in me. I reckon I got away
from the sea jest in time. I wouldn't even dare to order a nigger
to swab decks, the way I'm feelin' now."

"You've allus made a good deal of talk about how many men you've
handled in your day," said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his
suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray
eyebrows. "It's bein' hinted round town here more or less that you're
northin' but bluff. I don't realize, come to think it over, how I
ever come to let you git such a holt in my fam'ly. I--"

The two were sitting, as was their custom in those days of the
Colonel's espionage, under the big maple in the yard. A man who was
passing in the highway paused and leaned on the fence.

"Can one of you gents tell me," he asked, "where such a lady as Miss
Phar"--he consulted a folded paper that he held in his
hand--"Pharleena Pike lives about here?"

He was an elderly man with a swollen nose, striated with purple veins.
Under his arm he carried a bundle done up in meat-paper.

There was a queer glint of excitement in the eyes of the Cap'n. But
he did not speak. He referred the matter to Ward with a jab of his
thumb.

"What do you want to know where Miss Pike lives for?" demanded the
Colonel, looking the stranger over with great disfavor.

"None of your business," replied the man of the swollen nose,
promptly. "I've asked a gent's question of one I took to be a gent,
and I'd like a gent's reply."

"You see," said Cap'n Sproul to the stranger, with a confidential
air, as though he were proposing to impart the secret of the Colonel's
acerbity, "Colonel Ward here is--"

"You go 'long two miles, swing at the drab school-house, and go to
the second white house on the left-hand side of the road!" shouted
Ward, hastily breaking in on the explanation. His thin cheeks flushed
angrily. The man shuffled on.

"Why don't you print it on a play-card that I'm engaged to Pharlina
Pike and hang it on the fence there?" the Colonel snorted, wrathfully,
whirling on the Cap'n. "Didn't it ever occur to you that some things
in this world ain't none of your business?"

The Cap'n sighed with the resigned air that he had been displaying
during the week past.

"Lemme see, where was I?" went on the Colonel, surlily. "I was sayin',
wasn't I, that I didn't see how I'd let you stick yourself into this
fam'ly as you've done? It's time now for you and me to git to a
reck'nin'. There's blamed liars round here snick'rin' in their
whiskers, and sayin' that you've backed me down. Now--"

Another man was at the fence, and interrupted with aggravating
disregard of the Colonel's intentness on the business in hand. This
stranger was short and squat, stood with his feet braced wide apart,
and had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. His broad face wore
a cheery smile.

"I've beat nor'west from the railroad, fetched a covered bridge on
the port quarter, shipmates," he roared, jovially, "and here I be,
bearin's lost and dead-reck'nin' skow-wowed."

"Seems to be your breed," sneered Ward to the Cap'n. "What's that
he's sayin', put in human language?"

"I'm chartered for port--port"--he also referred to a folded
paper--"to port Furliny Pike, som'eres in this latitude. Give me
p'ints o' compass, will ye?"

Ward leaped to his feet and strode toward the fence, his long legs
working like calipers.

"What do ye want of Pharline Pike?" he demanded, angrily.

"None of your business," replied the cheerful sailor. "If this is
the way landlubbers take an honest man's hail, ye're all jest as bad
as I've heard ye was."

"I'm a mind to cuff your ears," yapped the Colonel.

The other glanced up the angular height of his antagonist.

"Try it," he said, squaring his sturdy little figure. "Try it, and
I'll climb your main riggin' and dance a jig on that dog-vane of a
head of yourn."

This alacrity for combat clearly backed down Ward. In his rampageous
life his tongue had usually served him better than his fists.

"Avast, shipmate!" called the Cap'n, in his best sea tones. The
sailor beamed delighted recognition of marine masonry. "The fact of
the matter is, my friend here has some claim--the truth is, he's--"

"You go 'long two miles, swing at the drab school-house, and then
take the second house--white one--on the left-hand side of the road,"
bawled Ward, "and you go mighty quick!"

The sailor ducked acknowledgment and rolled away.

"If you'd unpinned that mouth of yourn fur enough to tell that tramp
that I'm engaged to Pharline Pike," growled Ward, returning to the
tree, "I'd 'a' broke in your head--and you might as well know it first
as last."

"Ain't you engaged to her?"

"You know I be."

"Well, I've allus told the truth all my life--and I reckon I shall
continner to tell it. If you're ashamed to have it knowed that you're
engaged to Pharlina Pike, then it's time she heard so. I'd jest as
soon tell her as not."

"I started to say to you," raged Ward, "that you'd stuck your finger
into my pie altogether too deep. I ain't killed as many sailors as
you're braggin' on, but there ain't no man ever licked Gid Ward,
and--"

"Near's I can tell from what I hear about you," retorted the Cap'n,
"built on racin' lines as you be, you've never let a man git near
enough to lick ye."

Again the Colonel noted that red vengefulness in the skipper's eyes,
and recoiled suspiciously.

"Oh, my rheumaticks!" the seaman hastened to moan.

Ward had his back to the fence.

"I cal'late as how there's another party that wants his bearin's,"
suggested Sproul.

A rather decayed-looking gentleman, wearing a frock-coat shiny at
the elbows, and a fuzzy plug-hat, was tapping his cane against one
of the pickets to attract attention.

"I am looking for the residence of Miss Pharlina Pike," he announced,
with a precise puckering of his lips. "I'll thank you for a word of
direction. But I want to say, as a lowly follower of the Lord--in
evangelical lines--that it is not seemly for two men to quarrel in
public."

Ward had been gaping at him in amazement.

"I can tell ye right now," he cried, "that Miss Pharline Pike ain't
hirin' no farm-hand that wears a plug-hat! There ain't no need of
your goin' to her place."

"My dear sir," smiled the decayed gentleman, "it is a delicate matter
not to be canvassed in public; but I can assure you that I shall not
remain with Miss Pike as a menial or a bond-servant. Oh no! Not by
any means, sir!"

Ward scruffed his hand over his forehead, blinking with puzzled
astonishment.

"I'll thank you for the directions," said the stranger. "They were
not able to give me exact instructions at the village--at least, I
cannot remember them."

"I ain't no dadfired guide-board to stand here all day and p'int the
way to Pharline Pike's," roared Ward, with a heat that astonished
the decayed gentleman.

"I don't want no elder to go away from this place and report that
he wa'n't used respectful," said Sproul, meekly, addressing the
stranger. "You'll have to excuse Colonel Ward here. P'r'aps I can
say for him, as a pertickler friend, what it wouldn't be modest for
him to say himself. The fact is, he's en--"

The infuriated Ward leaped up and down on the sward and shrieked the
road instructions to the wayfarer, who hustled away, casting
apprehensive glances over his shoulder.

But when the Colonel turned again on the Cap'n, the latter rose and
hobbled with extravagant limpings toward the house.

"I don't reckon I can stay out here and pass talk with you,
brother-in-law," he called back, reproachfully. "Strangers, passin'
as they be, don't like to hear no such language as you're usin'. Jest
think of what that elder said!"

Ward planted himself upon a garden chair, and gazed down the road
in the direction in which the strangers had gone. He seemed to be
thinking deeply, and the Cap'n watched him from behind one of the
front-room curtains.

Two more men passed up the road. At the first, the Colonel flourished
his arms and indulged in violent language, the gist of which the Cap'n
did not catch. He ran to the fence when the second accosted him, tore
off a picket, and flung it after the fleeing man.

Then he sat down and pondered more deeply still.

He cast occasional glances toward the house, and once or twice arose
as though to come in. But he sat down and continued to gaze in the
direction of Pharlina Pike's house.

It was late in the afternoon when a woman came hurrying down the slope
through the maple-sugar grove. The Cap'n, at his curtain with his
keen sea eye, saw her first. He had been expecting her arrival. He
knew her in the distance for Pharlina Pike, and realized that she
had come hot-foot across lots.

Sproul was under the big maple as soon as she.

"For mercy sakes, Colonel Gid," she gasped, "come over to my house
as quick's you can!"

She had come up behind him, and he leaped out of his chair with a
snap like a jack-in-the-box.

"There's somethin' on, and I knowed it!" he squalled. "What be them
men peradin' past here to your house for, and tellin' me it ain't
none of my business? You jest tell me, Pharline Pike, what you mean
by triflin' in this way?"

"Lord knows what it's all about! I don't!" she quavered.

"You do know, too!" he yelled. "Don't ye try to pull wool over my
eyes! You do know, too!"

"It's a turrible thing to be jealous," cooed Cap'n Sproul to his
trembling little wife, who had followed at his heels.

"I don't know, either," wailed the spinster. "There's one of 'em in
the settin'-room balancin' a plug-hat on his knees and sayin', 'Lo!
the bridegroom cometh'; and there's two on the front steps kickin'
the dog ev'ry time he comes at 'em; and there's one in the kitchen
that smells o' tar, and has got a bagful of shells and sech things
for presents to me; there's one in the barn lookin' over the
stock--and I s'pose they're comin' down the chimbly and up the suller
stairs by this time. You're the only one I've got in the world to
depend on, Colonel Gid. For mercy sakes, come!"

"What do they say--what's their excuse?" he demanded, suspiciously.

"They say--they say," she wailed--"they say they want to marry me,
but I don't know what they've all come hov'rin' round me for--honest
to Moses I don't!" She folded her hands in her apron and wrung them.
"I'm pretty nigh scart to death of 'em," she sobbed.

"I reckon you can give 'em an earful when you git down there," said
the Cap'n, "when you tell 'em that you've been engaged to her for
fifteen years. But it ain't none surprisin' that men that hear of
that engagement should most natch'ally conclude that a woman would
like to git married after a while. I cal'late ye see now,
brother-in-law, that you ain't the only man that appreciates what
a good woman Miss Pharlina Pike is."

"You come along, Pharline," said the Colonel, taking her arm, after
he had bored the Cap'n for a moment with flaming eye. "I reckon I
can pertect ye from all the tramps ever let loose out of
jails--and--and when I git to the bottom of this I predict there'll
be bloodshed--there'll be bones broke, anyway." With one more
malevolent look at the Cap'n he started away.

"It's only a short cut through the maple growth, Louada Murilla,"
said Sproul. "My rheumaticks is a good deal better of a sudden. Let's
you and me go along."

As they trudged he saw farmers at a distance here and there, and
called to them to follow.

"Look here, I don't need no bee!" howled the Colonel. "This ain't
nothing to spread broadcast in this community."

"Never can tell what's li'ble to happen," retorted Sproul.
"Witnesses don't never hurt cases like this."

He continued to call the farmers, despite Ward's objurgations.
Farmers called their wives. All followed behind the engaged couple.
As usually happens in country communities, word had gone abroad in
other directions that there were strange doings at the Pike place.
With huge satisfaction the Cap'n noted that the yard was packed with
spectators.

"Where be ye?" bellowed Colonel Ward, now in a frenzy. "Where be ye,
ye scalawags that are round tryin' to hector a respectable woman that
wouldn't wipe her feet on ye? Come out here and talk to me!"

The neighbors fell back, recognizing his authority in the matter;
and the men who were suing this modern Penelope appeared from various
parts of the premises.

"I desire to say, as a clergyman along evangelical lines, and not
a settled pastor," said the man in the fuzzy plug-hat, "that I do
not approve of this person's violent language. I have seen him once
before to-day, and he appeared singularly vulgar and unrefined. He
used violent language then. I desire to say to you, sir, that I am
here on the best of authority"--he tapped his breast pocket--"and
here I shall remain until I have discussed the main question
thoroughly with the estimable woman who has invited me here."

"It's a lie--I never invited him, Colonel Gid!" cried the spinster.
"If you're any part of a man, and mean any part of what you have allus
said to me, you'll make him take that back."

For a moment the Colonel's jealous suspicion had flamed again, but
the woman's appeal fired him in another direction.

"Look here, you men," he shouted, his gaze running over plug-hat,
swollen nose, seaman's broad face, and the faces of the other suitors,
"I'm Gideon Ward, of Smyrna, and I've been engaged to Miss Pharline
Pike for fifteen years, and--"

"Then I don't blame her for changing her mind, ye bloody landlubber!"
snorted the seaman, smacking his hand upon his folded paper.

"Being engaged signifies little in the courts of matrimony," said
the decayed-looking man with dignity. "She has decided to choose
another, and--"

Colonel Ward threw back his shoulders and faced them all with
glittering eyes.

"I'd like to see the man that can step into this town and lug off
the woman that's promised to me," he raved. "Engagements don't hold,
hey? Then you come this way a week from to-day, and you'll see Gideon
Ward and Pharline Pike married as tight as a parson can tie the knot.
I mean it!" The excitement of the moment, his rage at interference
in his affairs, his desire to triumph thus publicly over these
strangers, had led him into the declaration.

The spinster gasped, but she came to him and trustfully put her hand
on his arm.

"P'raps some can be put off by that bluff," said the man with the
swollen nose, "but not me that has travelled. I'm here on business,
and I've got the dockyments, and if there's any shenanigan, then some
one's got to pay me my expenses, and for wear and tear." He waved
a paper.

Ward leaped forward and snatched the paper from his grasp.

"It's about time for me to see what you're flourishing round here
promiskous, like a bill o' sale of these primises," he snarled.

"You can read it, and read it out jest as loud as you want to," said
the man, coming forward and putting a grimy finger on a paragraph
displayed prominently on the folded sheet of newspaper.

The Colonel took one look and choked. An officious neighbor grabbed
away the paper when Ward made a sign as though to tuck it into his
pocket.

"I'll read it," said the neighbor. "Mebbe my eyesight is better'n
yourn." Then he read, in shrill tones:

   "NOTICE TO BACHELORS

"Unmarried maiden lady, smart and good-looking, desires good husband.
Has two-hundred-and-thirty-acre farm in good state of cultivation,
well stocked, and will promise right party a home and much affection.
Apply on premises to Pharlina Pike, Smyrna."

"I never--I never--dadrat the liar that ever wrote that!" screamed
the spinster.

"You see for yourself," said the man of the swollen nose, ignoring
her disclaimer. "We're here on business, and expect to be treated
like business men--or expenses refunded to us."

But the Colonel roared wordlessly, like some angry animal, seized
a pitchfork that was leaning against the side of the spinster's ell,
and charged the group of suitors. His mien was too furious. They fled,
and fled far and forever.

"There's some one," said Ward, returning into the yard and driving
the fork-tines into the ground, "who has insulted Miss Pike. I'd give
a thousand dollars to know who done that writin'."

Only bewildered stares met his furious gaze.

"I want you to understand," he went on, "that no one can drive me
to git married till I'm ready. But I'm standin' here now and tellin'
the nosy citizens of this place that I'm ready to be married, and
so's she who is goin' to be my companion, and we'll 'tend to our own
business in spite of the gossips of Smyrna. It's for this day week!
I don't want no more lyin' gossip about it. You're gittin' it straight
this time. It's for this day week; no invitations, no cards, no
flowers, no one's durnation business. There, take that home and chaw
on it. Pharline, let's you and me go into the house."

"I reckon there's witnesses enough to make that bindin'," muttered
Cap'n Sproul under his breath.

He bent forward and tapped the Colonel on the arm as Ward was about
to step upon the piazza.

"Who do ye suspect?" he whispered, hoarsely.

It was a perfectly lurid gaze that his brother-in-law turned on him.

What clutched Ward's arm was a grip like a vise. He glared into the
Colonel's eyes with light fully as lurid as that which met his gaze.
He spoke low, but his voice had the grating in it that is more ominous
than vociferation.

"I thought I'd warn ye not to twit. My rheumaticks is a good deal
better at this writin', and my mind ain't so much occupied by other
matters as it has been for a week or so. When you come home don't
talk northin' but business, jest as you natch'ally would to a
brother-in-law and an equal pardner. That advice don't cost northin',
but it's vallyble."

As Cap'n Sproul trudged home, his little wife's arm tucked snugly
in the hook of his own, he observed, soulfully:

"Mattermony, Louada Murilla--mattermony, it is a blessed state that
it does the heart good to see folks git into as ought to git into
it. As the poet says--um-m-m, well, it's in that book on the
settin'-room what-not. I'll read it to ye when we git home."




V


Cap'n Aaron Sproul was posted that bright afternoon on the end of
his piazza. He sat bolt upright and twiddled his gnarled thumbs
nervously. His wife came out and sat down beside him.

"Where you left off, Cap'n," she prompted meekly, "was when the black,
whirling cloud was coming and you sent the men up-stairs--"

"Aloft!" snapped Cap'n Sproul.

"I mean aloft--and they were unfastening the sails off the ropes,
and--"

"Don't talk of snuggin' a ship like you was takin' in a wash," roared
the ship-master, in sudden and ungallant passion. It was the first
impatient word she had received from him in that initial, cozy year
of their marriage. Her mild brown eyes swam in tears as she looked
at him wonderingly.

"I--I haven't ever seen a ship or the sea, but I'm trying so hard
to learn, and I love so to hear you talk of the deep blue ocean. It
was what first attracted me to you." Her tone was almost a whimper.

But her meekness only seemed to increase the Cap'n's impatience.

"You haven't seemed to be like your natural self for a week," she
complained, wistfully. "You haven't seemed to relish telling me
stories of the sea and your narrow escapes. You haven't even seemed
to relish vittles and the scenery. Oh, haven't you been weaned from
the sea yet, Aaron?"

Cap'n Sproul continued to regard his left foot with fierce gloom.
He was giving it his undivided attention. It rested on a wooden
"cricket," and was encased in a carpet slipper that contrasted
strikingly with the congress boot that shod his other foot. Red roses
and sprays of sickly green vine formed the pattern of the carpet
slipper. The heart of a red rose on the toe had been cut out, as though
the cankerworm had eaten it; and on a beragged projection that stuck
through and exhaled the pungent odor of liniment, the Cap'n's
lowering gaze was fixed.

"There's always somethin' to be thankful for," said his meek wife,
her eyes following his gaze. "You've only sprained it, and didn't
break it. Does it still ache, dear?"

"It aches like--of course it aches!" roared the Cap'n. "Don't ask
that jeebasted, fool question ag'in. I don't mean to be tetchy,
Louada Murilla," he went on, after a little pause, a bit of mildness
in his tone, "but you've got to make allowance for the way I feel.
The more I set and look at that toe the madder I git at myself. Oh,
I hadn't ought to have kicked that cousin of yourn, that's what I
hadn't!"

"You don't know how glad I am to hear you say that, Aaron," she cried,
with fervor. "I was afraid you hadn't repented."

"I ought to 'a' hit him with a club and saved my toe, that's what
I mean," he snorted, with grim viciousness.

She sighed, and he resumed his dismal survey of the liniment-soaked
rags.

"Once when I was--" he resumed, in a low growl, after a time.

"Oh, I'm so glad you're goin' to tell a story, Cap'n," she chirped,
welcoming his first return of good-nature since his mishap.

"There ain't no story to it," he snapped. "I only want to say that
there's a place down in Africa where I put in with the _Jefferson
P. Benn_ one time, where they daub honey on folks that they want to
git red of, and anchor 'em on an ant-bed. That's jest what's happenin'
to me here in Smyrna, and my thutty thousand dollars that I've worked
hard for and earnt and saved is the honey. You've lived among them
here all your life, Louada Murilla, and I s'pose you've got more or
less wonted to 'em. But if I hadn't squirmed and thrashed round a
little durin' the time I've lived here, after marryin' you and
settlin' down among 'em, they'd have et me, honey, money, hide, and
hair. As it is, they've got their little lunch off'm me. I haven't
thrashed round enough till--till yistiddy."

He wriggled the toe in the centre of the rose, and grunted.

"I was in hopes we wouldn't have any more trouble in the family, only
what we've had with brother Gideon since we've been married," she
said mildly. "Of course, Marengo Todd is only a second cousin of mine,
but still, he's in the family, you know, and families hang together,
'cause blood--"

"Blood is what they want, blast 'em!" he bawled, angrily. "I've used
Marengo Orango, there, or whatever you call him, all right, ain't
I? I've let him do me! He knowed I was used to sea ways, and wa'n't
used to land ways, and that he _could_ do me. I lent him money, first
off, because I liked you. And I've lent him money sence because I
like a liar--and he's a good one! I've used all your relatives the
best I've knowed how, and--and they've turned round and used me! But
I've put a dot, full-stop, period to it--and I done it with that toe,"
he added, scowling at the pathetic heart of the red rose.

"I wish it hadn't been one of the family," she sighed.

"It couldn't well help bein' one," snarled the Cap'n. "They're about
all named Todd or Ward round here but one, and his name is Todd Ward
Brackett, and he's due next. And they're all tryin' to borry money
off'm me and sell me spavined hosses. Now, let's see if they can take
a hint." He tentatively wriggled the toe some more, and groaned. "The
Todds and the Wards better keep away from me."

Then he suddenly pricked up his ears at the sound of the slow rumble
of a wagon turning into the yard. The wagon halted, and they heard
the buzzing twang of a jew's-harp, played vigorously.

"There's your Todd Ward Brackett. I predicted him! 'Round here to
sell ye rotten thread and rusted tinware and his all-fired Balm o'
Joy liniment."

"It's good liniment, and I need some more for your toe, Aaron,"
pleaded his wife, putting her worsted out of her lap.

"I'll chop that toe off and use it for cod bait before I'll cure it
by buying any more liniment off'm him," the Cap'n retorted. "You jest
keep your settin', Louada Murilla. I'll tend to your fam'ly end after
this."

He struggled up and began to hop toward the end of the piazza. The
new arrival had burst into cheery song:

   "There was old Hip Huff, who went by freight
    To Newry Corner, in this State.
    Packed him in a--"

There was a red van in the yard, its side bearing the legend:

    T. BRACKETT,

    TINWARE AND YANKEE NOTIONS.

    LICENSED BY C.C.

A brisk, little, round-faced man sat on the high seat, bolt upright
in the middle of it, carolling lustily. It was "Balm o' Joy" Brackett,
pursuing his humble vocation and using his familiar method of
attracting customers to their doors.

"Shet up that clack!" roared the Cap'n.

"Hillo, hullo, hallah, gallant Captain," chirped Brackett,
imperturbable under the seaman's glare. "I trust that glory floods
your soul and all the world seems gay." And he went on breathlessly:

"May ev'ry hour of your life seem like a pan of Jersey milk, and may
you skim the cream off'm it. Let's be happy, let's be gay, trade with
me when I come your way. Tinware shines like the new-ris' sun, twist,
braid, needles beat by none; here's your values, cent by cent, and
Balm o' Joy lin-i-ment. Trade with--"

"Git out o' this yard!" bawled the Cap'n, in his storm-and-tempest
tones. "You crack-brained, rag-and-bone-land-pirate, git off'm my
premises! I don't want your stuff. I've bought the last cent's wu'th
of you I'll ever buy. Git out!"

"The Cap'n isn't well to-day, Todd," quavered Mrs. Sproul. Fear
prompted her to keep still. But many years of confidential barter
of rags for knicknacks had made Todd Brackett seem like "own folks,"
as she expressed it. "We won't trade any to-day," she added,
apologetically.

"Nor we won't trade ever," bawled the Cap'n, poising himself on one
foot like an angry hawk. "You go 'long out of this yard."

Without losing his smile--for he had been long accustomed to the
taunts and tirades of dissatisfied housewives--the peddler backed
his cart around and drove away, crying over his shoulder with great
good-humor:

"A merry life and a jolly life is the life for you and me!"

"I'll make life merry for ye, if ye come into this yard ag'in, you
whiffle-headed dog-vane, you!" the Cap'n squalled after him. But
Brackett again struck up his roundelay:

   "There was old Hip Huff, who went by freight
    To Newry Corner, in this State.
    Put him in a crate to git him there,
    With a two-cent stamp to pay his fare.
      Rowl de fang-go--old Smith's mare."

The Cap'n hopped into the house and set his foot again on the cricket
that his wife brought dutifully. He gritted his teeth as long as the
voice of the singer came to his ears.

"I wish you hadn't," mourned his wife; "he's as good-meaning a man
as there is in town, even if he is a little light-headed. He's always
given me good trades, and his st'ilyards don't cheat on rags."

The old mariner was evidently preparing a stinging reply, but a knock
on the door interrupted him. Louada Murilla admitted three men, who
marched in solemnly, one behind the other, all beaming with great
cordiality. Cap'n Sproul, not yet out of the doldrums, simply
glowered and grunted as they took seats.

Then one of them, whom Sproul knew as Ludelphus Murray, the local
blacksmith, arose and cleared his throat with ominous formality.

"It's best to hammer while the iron is hot, Cap'n," he said. "It won't
take many clips o' the tongue to tell you what we've come for. We
three here are a committee from the Smyrna Ancient and Honer'ble
Firemen's Association to notify you that at a meetin' last ev'nin'
you was unanimously elected a member of that organization, and--"

"Oh, Aaron!" cried Louada Murilla, ecstatically. "How glad I am this
honor has been given to you! My own father belonged."

"And," continued Murray, with a satisfied smile, and throwing back
his shoulders as one who brings great tidings, "it has been realized
for a long time that there ain't been the discipline in the
association that there ought to be. We have now among us in our midst
one who has commanded men and understands how to command men; one
who has sailed the ragin' deep in times of danger, and--and, well,
a man that understands how to go ahead and take the lead in tittlish
times. So the association"--he took a long breath--"has elected you
foreman, and I hereby hand you notice of the same and the book of
rules."

The Cap'n scowled and put his hand behind the rocking-chair in which
he was seated.

"Not by a--" he began, but Murray went on with cheerful explanation.

"I want to say to you that this association is over a hundred years
old, and our hand tub, the 'Hecla,' is ninety-seven years old, and
has took more prizes squirtin' at musters than any other tub in the
State. We ain't had many fires ever in Smyrna, but the Ancients take
the leadin' rank in all social events, and our dances and banquets
are patronized by the best."

"It's an awful big honor, Aaron," gasped his wife. She turned to the
committee. "The Cap'n hasn't been feelin' well, gentlemen, and this
honor has kind of overcome him. But I know he appreciates it. My own
father was foreman once, and it's a wonderful thing to think that
my husband is now."

"'Tain't likely that the Ancients will ever forgit them dinners we
had here, Mis' Sproul," remarked one of the men, 'suffling' the
moisture at the corners of his mouth.

"Seein' that you ain't well, we don't expect no speech, Cap'n," said
Murray, laying the documents upon Sproul's knee. "I see that the
honor has overcome you, as it nat'rally might any man. We will now
take our leave with a very good-day, and wishin' you all of the best,
yours truly, and so forth." He backed away, and the others rose.

"Pass through the kitchen, gentlemen," said Mrs. Sproul, eagerly.
"I will set out a treat." They trudged that way with deep bows at
the threshold to their newly drafted foreman, who still glared at
them speechlessly.

When Mrs. Sproul returned at length, still fluttering in her
excitement, he was reading the little pamphlet that had been left
with him, a brick-red color slowly crawling up the back of his neck.

"Just think of it for an honor, Aaron," she stammered, "and you here
in town only such a little while! Oh, I am so proud of you! Mr. Murray
brought the things in his team and left them on the piazza. I'll run
and get them."

She spread them on the sitting-room floor, kneeling before him like
a priestess offering sacrifice. With his thumb in the pamphlet, he
stared at the array.

There was a battered leather hat with a broad apron, or scoop, behind
to protect the back. On a faded red shield above the visor was the
word "Foreman." There were two equally battered leather buckets.
There was a dented speaking-trumpet. These the Cap'n dismissed one
by one with an impatient scowl. But he kicked at one object with his
well foot.

"What's that infernal thing?" he demanded.

"A bed-wrench, Aaron. It's to take apart corded beds so as to get
them out of houses that are on fire. There aren't hardly any corded
beds now, of course, but it's a very old association that you're
foreman of, and the members keep the old things. It's awfully nice
to do so, I think. It's like keeping the furniture in old families.
And that big bag there, with the puckerin'-string run around it, is
the bag to put china and valuables into and lug away."

"And your idee of an honor, is it," he sneered, "is that I'm goin'
to put that dingbusset with a leather back-fin onto my head and grab
up them two leather swill-pails and stick that iron thing there under
my arm and grab that puckering-string bag in my teeth and start
tophet-te-larrup over this town a-chasin' fires? Say--" but his
voice choked, and he began to read once more the pamphlet. The red
on the back of his neck grew deeper.

At last the explosion occurred.

"Louada Murilla Sproul, do you mean to say that you've had this thing
in your fam'ly once, and was knowin' what it meant, and then let them
three Shanghaiers come in here and shove this bloodsucker bus'ness
onto me, and git away all safe and sound? I had been thinkin' that
your Todds and Wards was spreadin' some sail for villuns, but they're
only moskeeters to Barb'ry pirates compared with this."

He cuffed his hand against the open pages of the pamphlet.

"It says here that the foreman has to set up a free dinner for 'em
four times a year and ev'ry holiday. It says that the foreman is fined
two dollars for ev'ry monthly meetin' that he misses, other members
ten cents. He's fined ten dollars for ev'ry fire that he isn't at,
other members a quarter of a dollar. He's fined one dollar for ev'ry
time he's ketched without his hat, buckets, bag, and bed-wrench hung
in his front hall where they belong, other members ten cents. And
he's taxed a quarter of the whole expenses of gittin' to firemen's
muster and back. Talk about lettin' blood with a gimlet! Why, they're
after me with a pod-auger!"

All the afternoon he read the little book, cuffed it, and cursed.
He snapped up Louada Murilla with scant courtesy when she tried to
give him the history of Smyrna's most famous organization, and
timorously represented to him the social eminence he had attained.

"It isn't as though you didn't have money, and plenty of it," she
pleaded. "You can't get any more good out of it than by spending it
that way. I tell you, Aaron, it isn't to be sneezed at, leading all
the grand marches at the Ancients' dances and being boss of 'em all
at the muster, with the band a-playin' and you leading 'em right up
the middle of the street. It's worth it, Aaron--and I shall be so
proud of you!"

He grumbled less angrily the next morning. But he still insisted that
he didn't propose to let the consolidated Todds and Wards of Smyrna
bunco him into taking the position, and said that he should attend
the next meeting of the Ancients and resign.

But when, on the third evening after his election, the enthusiastic
members of the Smyrna A. & H.F.A. came marching up from the village,
the brass band tearing the air into ribbons with cornets and
trombones, his stiff resolve wilted suddenly. He began to grin
shamefacedly under his grizzled beard, and hobbled out onto the porch
and made them a stammering speech, and turned scarlet with pride when
they cheered him, and basked in the glory of their compliments, and
thrilled when they respectfully called him "Chief." He even told
Louada Murilla that she was a darling, when she, who had been
forewarned, produced a "treat" from a hiding-place in the cellar.

"I knew you'd appreciate it all as soon as you got wonted to the honor,
Aaron," she whispered, happy tears in her eyes. "It's the social
prominence--that's all there is to it. There hasn't been a fire in
the town for fifteen years, and you aren't going to be bothered one
mite. Oh, isn't that band just lovely?"

The Cap'n went to bed late that night, his ears tingling with the
adulation of the multitude, and in his excited insomnia
understanding for the first time in his life the words: "Uneasy lies
the head that wears a crown." He realized more fully now that his
shipmaster days had given him a taste for command, and that he had
come into his own again.




VI


The new chief of the Ancients devoted the first hours of the next
morning to the arrangement of his fire-fighting gear in the front
hall, and when all the items had been suspended, so that they would
be ready to his hand as well as serve as ornament, he went out on
the porch and sunned himself, revelling in a certain snug and
contented sense of importance, such as he hadn't felt since he had
stepped down from the quarter-deck of his own vessel. He even gazed
at the protruding and poignant centre of that rose on his carpet
slipper with milder eyes, and sniffed aromatic whiffs of liniment
with appreciation of its invigorating odor.

It was a particularly peaceful day. From his porch he could view a
wide expanse of rural scenery, and, once in a while, a flash of sun
against steel marked the location of some distant farmer in his
fields. There were no teams in sight on the highway, for the men of
Smyrna were too busily engaged on their acres. He idly watched a trail
of dun smoke that rose from behind a distant ridge and zigzagged
across the blue sky. He admired it as a scenic attraction, without
attaching any importance to it. Even when a woman appeared on the
far-off ridge and flapped her apron and hopped up and down and
appeared to be frantically signalling either the village in the
valley or the men in the fields, he only squinted at her through the
sunlight and wondered what ailed her. A sudden inspiring thought
suggested that perhaps she had struck a hornets' nest. He chuckled.

A little later a ballooning cloud of dust came rolling down the road
toward him and the toll-bridge that led to Smyrna village. He noted
that the core of the cloud was a small boy, running so hard that his
knees almost knocked under his chin. He spun to a halt in front of
the Cap'n's gate and gasped:

"Fi-ah, fi-ah, fi-ah-h-h-h, Chief! Ben Ide's house is a-fi-ah. I'll
holler it in the village and git 'em to ring the bell and start
'Hecla.'" Away he tore.

"Fire!" bawled Cap'n Aaron, starting for the front hall with a scuff,
a hop, a skip, and jump, in order to favor his sprained toe. "Fire
over to Ben Ide's!"

He had his foreman's hat on wrong side to when his wife came bursting
out of the sitting-room into the hall. She, loyal though excited lady
of the castle, shifted her knight's helmet to the right-about and
stuffed his buckets, bag, and bed-wrench into his hands. The cord
of his speaking-trumpet she slung over his neck.

"I helped get father ready once, twenty years ago," she stuttered,
"and I haven't forgot! Oh, Aaron, I wish you hadn't got such a
prejudice against owning a horse and against Marengo when he tried
to sell you that one. Now you've got to wait till some one gives you
a lift. You can't go on that foot to Ide's."

"Hoss!" he snorted. "Marengo! What he tried to sell me would be a
nice thing to git to a fire with! Spavined wusser'n a carpenter's
saw-hoss, and with heaves like a gasoline dory! I can hop there on
one foot quicker'n he could trot that hoss there! But I'll git there.
I'll git there!"

He went limping out of the door, loaded with his equipment.

The Methodist bell had not begun to ring, and it was evident that
the messenger of ill tidings had not pattered into the village as
yet.

But there was a team in sight. It was "Balm o' Joy" Brackett, his
arms akimbo as he fished on the reins to hurry his horse. He was coming
from the direction of the toll-bridge, and had evidently met the boy.

"I've got my lo'd--I've got my lo'd, but I'll leave behind me all
o' the ro'd," he chirped, when the Cap'n went plunging toward him
with the evident intention of getting on board.

"I'm foreman of the Ancients," roared the Cap'n, "and I have the right
to press into service any craft I see passin'. Take me aboard, I say,
dumblast ye!"

"This ain't no high seas," retorted Brackett, trying to lick past.
"You can drive gents out of your dooryard, but you can't do no
press-gang bus'ness on 'em."

It was apparent that even "Balm o' Joy's" bland nature could
entertain resentment.

"'Tain't right to lay up grudges ag'inst a man that was fussed up
like I was, Mister Brackett," pleaded the Cap'n, hopping along beside
the van. "I've got to git to that fire, I tell you. I'm the foreman!
I'll use you right, after this. I will, I tell you. Lemme on board."

"Promus' flies high when it's hot and dry!" twittered the peddler,
still cheerful but obstinate.

"I'll give ye five dollars to take me to Ben Ide's--ten!" he roared,
when Brackett showed no sign of stopping.

"Promus' on the ground can be better found. Whoa!" cried Brackett,
promptly. "I'll take the fare before you climb up! You'll be so busy
when you git to the fire that I wouldn't want to bother you then."

The Cap'n glowered but chewed his lips to prevent retort, pulled his
wallet, and paid. Then he gathered his apparatus and grunted up to
the high seat.

Far behind them the excited clang-clang of the Methodist bell was
pealing its first alarm.

"By the time they git hosses up out of the fields and hitched onto
'Hecla,' and git their buckets and didoes and git started, I reckon
things will be fried on both sides at Ben Ide's," chatted the peddler.

"Lick up! Lick up!" barked the Cap'n. "I'm payin' for a quick ride
and not conversation."

Brackett clapped the reins along his nag's skinny flank, set his
elbows on his knees, and began:

   "There was old Hip Huff, who went by freight,
    To Newry Corner, in--"

"Luff, luff!" snorted the Cap'n, in disgust.

"Luff, luff?" queried the songster.

"Yes, luff! Avast! Belay! Heave to! I don't like caterwaulin'. You
keep your mind right on drivin' that hoss."

"You must have been a pop'lar man all your life," remarked the peddler,
with a baleful side-glance. "Does politeness come nat'ral to you,
or did you learn it out of a book?"

The Cap'n made no reply. He only hitched himself forward as though
trying to assist the momentum of the cart, and clutched his buckets,
one in each hand.

A woman came flying out of the first house they passed and squalled:

"Where's the fire, Mr. Brackett, and is anybody burnt up, and hadn't
you jest as liv' take my rags now? I've got 'em all sacked and ready
to weigh, and I sha'n't be to home after to-day."

Brackett pulled up.

"Blast your infernal pelt," howled the Cap'n, "you drive on!"

"Bus'ness is bus'ness," muttered the peddler, "and you ain't bought
me and my team with that little old ten dollars of yourn, and you
can't do northin', anyway, till Hecla gits there with the boys, and
when you're there I don't see what you're goin' to amount to with
that sore toe."

He was clearly rebellious. Cap'n Sproul had touched the tenderest
spot in T.W. Brackett's nature by that savage yelp at his vocal
efforts. But the chief of the Ancients had been wounded as cruelly
in his own pride. He stood up and swung a bucket over the crouching
peddler.

"Drive on, you lubber," he howled, "or I'll peg you down through that
seat like I'd drive a tack. Drive on!"

Brackett ducked his head and drove. And the Cap'n, summoning all the
resources of a vocabulary enriched by a sea experience of thirty
years, yelled at him and his horse without ceasing.

When they topped the ridge they were in full view of Ide's doomed
buildings, and saw the red tongues of flame curling through the
rolling smoke.

But a growing clamor behind made the Chief crane his neck and gaze
over the top of the van.

"Hecla" was coming!

Four horses were dragging it, and two-score men were howling along
with it, some riding, but the most of them clinging to the brake-beams
and slamming along through the dust on foot. A man, perched beside
the driver, was bellowing something through a trumpet that sounded
like:

"Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!"

The peddler was driving sullenly, and without any particular
enterprise. But this tumult behind made his horse prick up his ears
and snort. When the nag mended his pace and began to lash out with
straddling legs, the Cap'n yelled:

"Let him go! Let him go! They want us to get off the road!"

"Goff-off-errow!" the man still bellowed through the trumpet.

"I've got goods that will break and I'll be cuss-fired if I'll break
'em for you nor the whole Smyrna Fire Department!" screamed Brackett;
but when he tried to pull up his steed, the Cap'n, now wholly beside
himself and intent only on unrestricted speed, banged a leather
bucket down across the driver's hands.

Brackett dropped the reins, with a yell of pain, and they fell into
the dust and dragged. The horse broke into a bunchy, jerky gallop,
and lunged down the hill, the big van swaying wildly with an ominous
rattling and crashing in its mysterious interior.

There were teams coming along a cross-road ahead of them and teams
rattling from the opposite direction toward the fire, approaching
along the highway they were travelling. Collisions seemed inevitable.
But in a moment of inspiration the Cap'n grabbed the trumpet that
hung from its red cord around his neck and began to bellow in his
turn:

"Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!" It was as nearly as human voice
could phrase "Get off the road" through the thing.

The terrifying bulk of the big van cleared the way ahead, even though
people desperately risked tip-ups in the gutter. As it tore along,
horses climbed fences with heads and tails up. There were men
floundering in bushes and women squalling from the tops of
rock-heaps.

The Chief of the Ancients did not halt to attend to his duties at
the fire. He went howling past on the high seat of the van, over the
next ridge and out of sight.

"We're goin' to tophet, and you done it, and you've got to pay for
it," Brackett wailed over and over, bobbing about on the seat. But
the Cap'n did not reply. Teams kept coming into sight ahead, and he
had thought only for his monotonous bellow of "Goff-off-errow!"

Disaster--the certain disaster that they had despairingly
accepted--met them at the foot of Rines' hill, two miles beyond Ide's.
The road curved sharply there to avoid "the Pugwash," as a
particularly mushy and malodorous bog was called in local
terminology.

At the foot of the hill the van toppled over with a crash and anchored
the steaming horse, already staggering in his exhaustion. Both men
had scrambled to the top of the van, ready to jump into the Pugwash
as they passed. The Cap'n still carried his equipment, both buckets
slung upon one arm, and even in this imminent peril it never occurred
to him to drop them. Lucky fate made their desperate leap for life
a tame affair. When the van toppled they were tossed over the roadside
into the bog, lighted on their hands and knees, and sank slowly into
its mushiness like two Brobdingnagian frogs.

It was another queer play of fate that the next passer was Marengo
Todd, whipping his way to the fire behind a horse that had a bit of
wire pinched over his nose to stifle his "whistling."

Marengo Todd leaped out and presented the end of a fence-rail to
Brackett first, and pulled him out.

When he stuck the end of the rail under the Cap'n's nose the Cap'n
pushed it away with mud-smeared hands.

"I don't, myself, nuss grudges in times of distress, Cap Sproul,"
shouted Todd. "You kicked me. I know that. But you was in the wrong,
and you got the wu'st of it. Proverdunce has allus settled my grudges
for me in jest that way. I forgive and pass on, but Proverdunce don't.
Take that fence-rail. It sha'n't ever be said by man that Marengo
Todd nussed a grudge."

When the Cap'n was once more on solid ground, Todd, still iterating
his forgiveness of past injuries, picked up a tin pie-plate that had
been jarred out of the van among other litter, and began to scrape
the black mud off the foreman of the Ancients in as matter-of-fact
a way as though he were currycombing a horse.

The spirit of the doughty mariner seemed broken at last. He looked
down at himself, at the mud-clogged buckets and his unspeakable
bedragglement.

"I've only got one word to say to you right here and now, Cap'n,"
went on Todd, meekly, "and it's this, that no man ever gits jest where
he wants to git, unless he has a ree-li'ble hoss. I've tried to tell
you so before, but--but, well, you didn't listen to me the way you
ought to." He continued to scrape, and the Cap'n stared mutely down
at the foot that was encased in a muddy slipper.

"Now, there's a hoss standin' there--" pursued Todd.

"What will you take for that team jest as it stands?" blurted the
mariner, desperately. The fire, the smoke of which was rolling up
above the distant tree-tops, and his duty there made him reckless.
As he looked down on Todd he hadn't the heart to demand of that meek
and injured person that he should forget and forgive sufficiently
to take him in and put him down at Ide's. It seemed like crowding
the mourners. Furthermore, Cap'n Aaron Sproul was not a man who
traded in humble apologies. His independence demanded a different
footing with Todd, and the bitter need of the moment eclipsed economy.
"Name your price!"

"A hundred and thutty, ev'rything throwed in, and I'll drive you
there a mile a minit," gasped Todd, grasping the situation.

With muddy hands, trembling in haste, the Cap'n drew his long, fat
wallet and counted out the bills. Brackett eyed him hungrily.

"You might jest as well settle with me now as later through the law,"
he cried.

But the Cap'n butted him aside, with an oath, and climbed into the
wagon.

"You drive as though the devil had kicked ye," he yelled to Todd.
"It's my hoss, and I don't care if you run the four legs off'm him."

Half-way to Ide's, a man leaped the roadside fence and jumped up and
down before them in the highway. He had a shotgun in his hands.

"It's my brother--Voltaire," shouted Marengo, pulling up, though
Cap'n Sproul swore tempestuously. "You've got to take him on. He
b'longs to your fire comp'ny."

"I was out huntin' when I heard the bell," bellowed the new passenger,
when he had scrambled to a place behind the wagon-seat, his back
toward them and his legs hanging down. "I'm fu'st hoseman, and it's
lucky you came along and giv' me a lift." He set his gun-butt down
between his knees, the muzzle pointing up.

Cap'n Sproul had his teeth set hard upon a hank of his grizzled
whiskers, and his eyes on the smoke ahead. Todd ran his wheezing horse
up the ridge, and when they topped it they beheld the whole moving
scene below them.

Men were running out of the burning house, throwing armfuls of goods
right and left. The "Hecla" was a-straddle of the well, and rows of
men were tossing at her brake-beams.

"Give her tar, give her tar!" yelled the man behind, craning his thin
neck. Todd lashed at the horse and sent him running down the slope.
At the foot of the declivity, just before they came to the lane
leading into Ide's place, there was a culvert where the road crossed
a brook.

The boarding in the culvert made a jog in the road, and when the wagon
struck this at top speed its body flipped behind like the tongue of
a catapult.

The man with the gun, having eyes and senses only for the fire and
his toiling fellow-Ancients, was unprepared. He went up, out, and
down in the dust, doggedly clinging to his gun. He struck the ground
with it still between his knees. The impact of the butt discharged
both barrels straight into the air.

Flanked by a roaring fire and howling crowd, and bombarded in the
rear, even a horse with a bone spavin and the heaves will exhibit
the spirit of Bucephalus. One of the rotten reins broke at Marengo's
first terrified tug. In less time than it takes to tell, Cap'n Aaron
Sproul, desperate and beholding only one resource--the tail
flaunting over the dasher--seized it and gave a seaman's sturdy pull.
The tail came away in his hands and left only a wildly brandishing
stump. Even in that moment of horror, the Cap'n had eyes to see and
wit to understand that this false tail was more of Marengo Todd's
horse-jockey guile. The look that he turned on the enterprising
doctor of caudal baldness was so perfectly diabolical that Marengo
chose what seemed the lesser of two evils. He precipitated himself
over the back of the seat, dropped to the ground as lightly as a cat,
ran wildly until he lost his footing, and dove into some wayside
alders. Cap'n Aaron Sproul was left alone with his newly acquired
property!

When he hove in sight of his own house he saw Louada Murilla on the
porch, gazing off at the smoke of the fire and evidently luxuriating
in the consciousness that it was her husband who was that day leading
the gallant forces of the Ancients.

As he stared wildly, home seemed his haven and the old house his rock
of safety. He did not understand enough about the vagaries of horses
and wagons to appreciate the risk. One rein still hung over the
dasher.

"Only one jib down-haul left of all the riggin'," he groaned, and
then grabbed it and surged on it.

The horse swung out of the road, the wagon careering wildly on two
wheels. Sproul crossed the corner of some ploughed land, swept down
a length of picket-fence, and came into his own lane, up which the
horse staggered, near the end of his endurance. The wagon swung and
came to grief against the stone hitching-post at the corner of the
porch. Cap'n Sproul, encumbered still with buckets and bag and
trumpet, floundered over the porch rail, through a tangled mass of
woodbine vines, and into the arms of his distracted wife.

For five minutes after she had supported him to a chair she could
do nothing but stare at him, with her hands clasped and her eyes
goggling, and cry, "Aaron, Aaron, dear!" in crescendo. His sole
replies to her were hollow sounds in his throat that sounded like
"unk!"

"Where have you been?" she cried. "All gurry, and wet as sop? If you
are hurt what made 'em let their Chief come home all alone with that
wild hoss? Aaron, can't you speak?"

He only flapped a muddy hand at her, and seemed to be beyond speech.
There was a dull, wondering look in his eyes, as though he were trying
to figure out some abstruse problem. He did not brighten until a team
came tearing up to the gate, and a man with a scoop fireman's hat
on came running to the porch. The man saluted.

"Chief," he said, with the air of an aide reporting on the field of
battle, "that house and barn got away from us, but we fit well for
'em--yas s'r, we fit well! It is thought queer in some quarters that
you wasn't there to take charge, but I told the boys that you'd
prob'ly got good reasons, and they'll git over their mad, all right.
You needn't worry none about that!"

The Cap'n's sole reply was another of those hollow "unks!"

"But the boys is pretty well beat out, and so I've run over to ask
if you'll let us use your ten-dollar fine for a treat? That will help
their feelin's to'ards you a good deal, and--"

The Cap'n, without taking his eyes from the smug face of the man,
swung one of the buckets and let drive at him. It missed. But he had
got his range, and the next bucket knocked off the scoop hat. When
the Cap'n scrambled to his feet, loaded with the bed-wrench for his
next volley, the man turned and ran for his team. The bed-wrench
caught him directly between the shoulders--a masterly shot. The
trumpet flew wild, but by that time the emissary of the Ancients was
in his wagon and away.

"Aaron!" his wife began, quaveringly, but the Cap'n leaped toward
her, pulled the mouth of the puckering-bag over her head, and hopped
into the house. When at last she ventured to peer in at the
sitting-room window, he was tearing the book of "Rules of the Smyrna
Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association," using both his hands
and his teeth, and worrying it as a dog worries a bone.

That was his unofficial resignation. The official one came as soon
as he could control his language.

And for a certain, prolonged period in the history of the town of
Smyrna it was well understood that Cap'n Aaron Sproul was definitely
out of public affairs. But in public affairs it often happens that
honors that are elusive when pursued are thrust upon him who does
not seek them.




VII


The moderator of the Smyrna town meeting held his breath for just
a moment so as to accentuate the hush in which the voters listened
for his words, and then announced the result of the vote for first
selectman of Smyrna:

"Whole number cast, one hundred thutty-two; necessary for a choice,
sixty-seven; of which Colonel Gideon Ward has thutty-one."

A series of barking, derisive yells cut in upon his solemn
announcement, and he rapped his cane on the marred table of the town
hall and glared over his spectacles at the voters.

"And Cap'n Aaron Sproul has one hundred and--"

The howl that followed clipped his last words. Men hopped upon the
knife-nicked settees of the town house and waved their hats while
they hooted. A group of voters, off at one side, sat and glowered
at this hilarity. Out of the group rose Colonel Gideon, his long frame
unfolding with the angularity of a carpenter's two-foot rule. There
were little dabs of purple on his knobby cheek-bones. His hair and
his beard bristled. He put up his two fists as far as his arms would
reach and vibrated them, like a furious Jeremiah calling down curses.

Such ferocious mien had its effect on the spectators after a time.
Smyrna quailed before her ancient tyrant, even though he was
dethroned.

"Almighty God has always wanted an excuse to destroy this town like
Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed," he shouted, his voice breaking
into a squeal of rage; "now He's got it."

He drove his pointed cap onto his head, gave a parting shake of his
fists that embraced moderator, voters, walls, floor, roof, and all
appurtenances of the town house, and stalked down the aisle and out.
The silence in town meeting was so profound that the voters heard
him welting his horse as he drove away.

After a time the moderator drew a long breath, and stated that he
did not see Cap'n Aaron Sproul in the meeting, and had been informed
that he was not present.

"I come past his place this mornin'," whispered Old Man Jordan to
his neighbor on the settee, "and he was out shovelin' snow off'm the
front walk, and when I asked him if he wa'n't comin' to town meetin',
he said that a run of the seven years' itch and the scurvy was pretty
bad, but he reckoned that politics was wuss. I should hate to be the
one that has to break this news to him."

"And seein' how it's necessary to have the first selectman here to
be sworn in before the meetin' closes this afternoon," went on the
moderator, "I'll appoint a committee of three to wait on Cap'n Aaron
Sproul and notify him of the distinguished honor that has been done
him this day by his feller townsmen."

He settled his spectacles more firmly upon his nose, and ran his gaze
calculatingly over the assembled voters. No one of those patriotic
citizens seemed to desire to be obtrusive at that moment.

"I'll appoint as chairman of that notifying committee," proceeded
the moderator, "Entwistle Harvey, and as--"

"I shall have to decline the honor," interrupted Mr. Entwistle Harvey,
rising promptly. The voters grinned. They thoroughly understood the
reason for Mr. Harvey's reluctance.

"It ain't that I'm any less a reformer than the others that has to-day
redeemed this town from ring rule and bossism," declared Mr. Harvey,
amid applause; "it ain't that I don't admire the able man that has
been selected to lead us up out of the vale of political sorrow--and
I should be proud to stand before him and offer this distinguished
honor from the voters of this town, but I decline because I--I--well,
there ain't any need of goin' into personal reasons. I ain't the man
for the place, that's all." He sat down.

"I don't blame him none for duckin'," murmured Old Man Jordan to his
seat companion. "Any man that was in the crowd that coaxed Cap'n
Sproul into takin' the foremanship of Heckly Fire Comp'ny has got
a good excuse. I b'lieve the law says that ye can't put a man twice
in peril of his life."

Cap'n Sproul's stormy relinquishment of the hateful honor that had
been foisted upon him by the Smyrna fire-fighters was history recent
enough to give piquant relish to the present situation. He had not
withheld nor modified his threats as to what would happen to any other
committee that came to him proffering public office.

The more prudent among Smyrna's voters had hesitated about making
the irascible ex-mariner a candidate for selectman's berth.

But Smyrna, in its placid New England eddy, had felt its own little
thrill from the great tidal wave of municipal reform sweeping the
country. It immediately gazed askance at Colonel Gideon Ward, for
twenty years first selectman of Smyrna, and growled under its breath
about "bossism." But when the search was made for a candidate to run
against him, Smyrna men were wary. Colonel Ward held too many
mortgages and had advanced too many call loans not to be well
fortified against rivals.

"The only one who has ever dared to twist his tail is his
brother-in-law, the Cap'n," said Odbar Broadway, oracularly, to the
leaders who had met in his store to canvass the political situation.
"The Cap'n won't be as supple as some in town office, but he ain't
no more hell 'n' repeat than what we've been used to for the last
twenty years. He's wuth thutty thousand dollars, and Gid Ward can't
foreclose no mo'gidge on him nor club him with no bill o' sale. He's
the only prominunt man in town that can afford to take the office
away from the Colonel. What ye've got to do is to go ahead and elect
him, and then trust to the Lord to make him take it."

So that was what Smyrna had done on that slushy winter's day.

It did it with secret joy and with ballots hidden in its palms, where
the snapping eyes of Colonel Ward could not spy.

And now, instead of invoking the higher power mentioned as a resource
by Broadway, the moderator of the town meeting was struggling with
human tools, and very rickety human tools they seemed to be.

Five different chairmen did he nominate, and with great alacrity the
five refused to serve.

The moderator took off his glasses, and testily rapped the dented
table.

"Feller citizens," he snapped, "this is gittin' to be boys' play.
I realize puffickly that Cap'n Aaron Sproul, our first
selectman-elect, has not been a seeker after public office since he
retired as foreman of the Hecla Fire Company. I realize puffickly
that he entertained some feelin' at the time that--that--he wasn't
exactly cal'lated to be foreman of an engine company. But that ain't
sayin' that he won't receive like gentlemen the committee that comes
to tell him that he has been elected to the highest office in this
town. I ain't got any more time to waste on cowards. There's one man
here that ain't afraid of his own shadder. I call on Constable Zeburee
Nute to head the committee, and take along with him Constables Wade
and Swanton. And I want to say to the voters here that it's a nice
report to go abroad from this town that we have to pick from the police
force to get men with enough courage to tell a citizen that he's been
elected first selectman. But the call has gone out for Cincinnatus,
and he must be brought here."

The moderator's tone was decisive and his mien was stern. Otherwise,
even the doughty Constable Nute might have refused to take orders,
though they were given in the face and eyes of his admiring neighbors.
He gnawed at his grizzled beard and fingered doubtfully the badge
that, as chief constable of the town, he wore on the outside of his
coat.

"Gents of the committee, please 'tend promptly to the duties
assigned," commanded the moderator, "and we will pass on to the next
article in the town warrant."

Mr. Nute rose slowly and marched out of the hall, the other two
victims following without any especial signs of enthusiasm.

In the yard of the town house Mr. Nute faced them, and remarked:

"I have some ideas of my own as to a genteel way of gittin' him
interested in this honor that we are about to bestow. Has any one
else ideas?"

The other two constables shook their heads gloomily.

"Then I'll take the brunt of the talk on me and foller my ideas,"
announced Mr. Nute. "I've been studyin' reform, and, furthermore,
I know who Cincinnatus was!"

The three men unhitched each his own team, and drove slowly, in single
file, along the mushy highway.

It was one of Cap'n Aaron Sproul's mentally mild, mellow, and benign
days, when his heart seemed to expand like a flower in the comforts
of his latter-life domestic bliss. Never had home seemed so
good--never the little flush on Louada Murilla's cheeks so
attractive in his eyes as they dwelt fondly on her.

In the night he had heard the sleet clattering against the pane and
the snow slishing across the clapboards, and he had turned on his
pillow with a little grunt of thankfulness.

"There's things about dry land and the people on it that ain't so
full of plums as a sailor's duff ought to be," he mused, "but--" And
then he dozed off, listening to the wind.

In the morning, just for a taste of rough weather, he had put on his
slicker and sea-boots and shovelled the slush off the front walk.
Then he sat down with stockinged feet held in the radiance of an open
Franklin stove, and mused over some old log-books that he liked to
thumb occasionally for the sake of adding new comfort to a fit of
shore contentment.

This day he was taking especial interest in the log-books, for he
was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic
literary effort that she had termed:

    FROM SHORE TO SHORE

    LINES FROM A MARINER'S ADVENTURES

   _The Life Story of the Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul_

   _Written by His Affectionate Wife_

"You can put down what's true," he said, continuing a topic that they
had been pursuing, "that boxin' the compass and knowin' a jib
down-haul from a pound of saleratus ain't all there is to a master
mariner's business, not by a blamed sight. Them passuls of cat's meat
that they call sailormen in these days has to be handled,--well, the
superintendent of a Sunday-school wouldn't be fit for the job, unless
he had a little special trainin'."

Louada Murilla, the point of her pencil at her lips, caught a
vindictive gleam in his eyes.

"But it seems awful cruel, some of the things that you--you--I
suppose you had to do 'em, Aaron! And yet when you stop and think
that they've got immortal souls to save--"

"They don't carry any such duffle to sea in their dunnage-bags,"
snapped the skipper. "Moral suasion on them would be about like
tryin' to whittle through a turkle's shell with a hummin'-bird's
pin-feather. My rule most generally was to find one soft spot on 'em
somewhere that a marlin-spike would hurt, and then hit that spot hard
and often. That's the only way I ever got somewhere with a cargo and
got back ag'in the same year."

"I suppose it has to be," sighed his wife, making a note. "It's like
killing little calves for veal, and all such things that make the
fond heart ache."

The Cap'n was "leaving" the grimy pages of a log-book. He paused over
certain entries, and his face darkened. There was no more
vindictiveness in his expression. It was regret and a sort of vague
worry.

"What is it, Aaron?" asked his wife, with wistful apprehensiveness.

"Northin'," he growled.

"But I know it's something," she insisted, "and I'm always ready to
share your burdens."

Cap'n Sproul looked around on the peace of his home, and some deep
feeling seemed to surge in his soul.

"Louada Murilla," he said, sadly, "this isn't anything to be written
in the book, and I didn't ever mean to speak of it to you. But there
are times when a man jest has to talk about things, and he can't help
it. There was one thing that I've been sorry for. I've said so to
myself, and I'm goin' to say as much to you. Confession is good for
the soul, so they say, and it may help me out some to tell you."

The horrified look on her face pricked him to speak further. 'Tis
a titillating sensation, sometimes, to awe or shock those whom we
love, when we know that forgiveness waits ready at hand.

"There was once--there was one man--I hit him dretful hard. He was
a Portygee. But I hit him too hard. It was a case of mutiny. I reckon
I could have proved it was mutiny, with the witnesses. But I hit him
hard."

"Did he--?" gasped his wife.

"He did," replied the Cap'n, shortly, and was silent for a time.

"The thing for me to have done," he went on, despondently, "was to
report it, and stood hearin'. But it was six weeks after we'd dropped
him overboard--after the funeral, ye know--before we reached port.
And there was a cargo ashore jest dancin' up and down to slip through
the main hatch as soon as t' other one was over the rail--and freights
'way up and owners anxious for results, and me tryin' for a record,
and all that, ye know. All is, there wa'n't nothin' said by the crew,
for they wa'n't lookin' for trouble, and knowed the circumstances,
and so I lo'ded and sailed. And that's all to date."

"But they say 'murder will out.'" Her face was white.

"It wa'n't murder. It was discipline. And I didn't mean to. But either
his soft spot was too soft, or else I hit too hard. What I ought to
have done was to report when my witnesses was right handy. Since I've
settled and married and got property, I've woke up in the night,
sometimes, and thought what would happen to me if that Portygee's
relatives got track of me through one of the crew standin' in with
'em--blabbin' for what he could git out of it. I have to think about
those things, now that I've got time to worry. Things looks different
ashore from what they do aflo't, with your own ship under you and
hustlin' to make money." He gazed round the room again, and seemed
to luxuriate in his repentance.

"But if anything should be said, you could hunt up those men and--"

"Hunt what?" the Cap'n blurted. "Hunt tarheels once they've took
their dunnage-bags over the rail? Hunt whiskers on a flea! What are
you talkin' about? Why, Louada Murilla, I never even knowed what the
Portygee's name was, except that I called him Joe. A skipper don't
lo'd his mem'ry with that sculch any more'n he'd try to find names
for the hens in the deck-coop.

"I made a mistake," he continued, after a time, "in not havin' it
cleaned up, decks washed, and everything clewed snug at the time of
it. But ev'ry man makes mistakes. I made mine then. It would be
God-awful to have it come down on me when I couldn't prove nothin'
except that I give him the best funeral I could. There ain't much
of anything except grit in the gizzard of a United States court. They
seem to think the Govumment wants every one hung. I remember a captain
once who--"

He paused suddenly, for he caught sight of three muddy wagons
trundling in procession into the yard. In the first one sat Constable
Zeburee Nute, his obtrusive nickel badge on his overcoat.

Cap'n Sproul looked at Louada Murilla, and she stared at him, and
in sudden panic both licked dry lips and were silent. The topic they
had been pursuing left their hearts open to terror. There are moments
when a healthy body suddenly absorbs germs of consumption that it
has hitherto thrown off in hale disregard. There are moments when
the mind and courage are overwhelmed by panic that reason does not
pause to analyze.




VIII


Louada Murilla opened the front door when the chief constable knocked,
after an exasperatingly elaborate hitching and blanketing of horses.
She staggered to the door rather than walked. The Cap'n sat with rigid
legs still extended toward the fire.

The three men filed into the room, and remained standing in solemn
row. Mr. Nute, on behalf of the delegation, refused chairs that were
offered by Mrs. Sproul. He had his own ideas as to how a committee
of notification should conduct business. He stood silent and looked
at Louada Murilla steadily and severely until she realized that her
absence was desired.

She tottered out of the room, her terrified eyes held in lingering
thrall by the woe-stricken orbs of the Cap'n.

Constable Nute eyed the door that she closed, waiting a satisfactory
lapse of time, and then cleared his throat and announced:

"I want you to realize, Cap'n Sproul, that me and my feller constables
here has been put in a sort of a hard position. I hope you'll consider
that and govern yourself accordin'. First of all, we're obeyin'
orders from them as has authority. I will say, however, that I have
ideas as to how a thing ought to be handled, and my associates have
agreed to leave the talkin' to me. I want to read you somethin'
first," he said, fumbling at the buttons on his coat, "but that you
may have some notion as to what it all points and be thinkin' it over,
I'll give you a hint. To a man of your understandin', I don't s'pose
I have to say more than 'Cincinnatus,' That one word explains itself
and our errunt."

"I never knowed his last name," mumbled the Cap'n, enigmatically.
"But I s'pose they've got it in the warrant, all right!" He was eying
the hand that was seeking the constable's inside pocket. "I never
was strong on Portygee names. I called him Joe."

Mr. Nute merely stared, without trying to catch the drift of this
indistinct muttering.

While the Cap'n watched him in an agony of impatience and suspense,
he slowly drew out a spectacle-case, settled his glasses upon his
puffy nose, unfolded a sheet of paper on which a dirty newspaper
clipping was pasted, and began to read:

"More than ever before in the history of the United States of America
are loyal citizens called upon to throw themselves into the breach
of municipal affairs, and wrest from the hands of the guilty--"

The ears of Cap'n Sproul, buzzing with his emotions, caught only a
few words, nor grasped any part of the meaning. But the sonorous
"United States of America" chilled his blood, and the word "guilty"
made his teeth chatter.

He felt an imperious need of getting out of that room for a moment--of
getting where he could think for a little while, out from under the
starings of those three solemn men.

"I want to--I want to--" he floundered; "I would like to get on my
shoes and my co't and--and--I'll be right back. I won't try to--I'll
be right back, I say."

Mr. Nute suspended his reading, looked over his spectacles, and gave
the required permission. Perhaps it occurred to his official sense
that a bit more dignified attire would suit the occasion better. A
flicker of gratification shone on his face at the thought that the
Cap'n was so nobly and graciously rising to the spirit of the thing.

"It's come, Louada Murilla--it's come!" gulped Cap'n Sproul, as he
staggered into the kitchen, where his wife cowered in a corner. "He's
readin' a warrant. He's even got the Portygee's name. My Gawd,
they'll hang me! I can't prove northin'."

"Oh, Aaron," sobbed his wife, and continued to moan. "Oh, Aaron--"
with soft, heartbreaking cluckings.

"Once the law of land-piruts gets a bight 'round ye, ye never git
away from it," groaned the Cap'n. "The law sharks is always waitin'
for seafarin' men. There ain't no hope for me."

His wife had no encouragement to offer.

"Murder will out, Aaron," she quaked. "And they've sent three
constables."

"Them other two--be they--?"

"They're constables."

"There ain't no hope. And it shows how desp'rit' they think I be.
It shows they're bound to have me. It's life and death, Louada Murilla.
If I don't git anything but State Prison, it's goin' to kill me, for
I've lived too free and open to be penned up at my time o' life. It
ain't fair--it ain't noways fair!" His voice broke. "It was all a
matter of discipline. But you can't prove it to land-sharks. If they
git me into their clutches I'm a goner."

His pistols hung on the wall where Louada Murilla had suspended them,
draped with the ribbons of peace.

"There's only one thing to do," he whispered, huskily, pointing at
the weapons with quivering finger. "I'll shoot 'em in the legs, jest
to hold 'em up. I'll git to salt water. I know skippers that will
take me aboard, even if they have to stand off the whole United States.
I've got friends, Louada, as soon as I git to tide-water. It won't
hurt 'em in there--a bullet in the leg. And it's life and death for
me. There's foreign countries where they can't take me up. I know
'em, I've been there. And I'll send for you, Louada Murilla. It's
the best I can think of now. It ain't what I should choose, but it's
the best I can think of. I've had short notice. I can't let 'em take
me."

As he talked he seemed to derive some comfort from action. He pulled
on his boots. He wriggled into his coat. From a pewter pitcher high
up on a dresser shelf he secured a fat wallet. But when he rushed
to take down the pistols his wife threw herself into his arms.

"You sha'n't do that, Aaron," she cried. "I'll go to State Prison
with you--I'll go to the ends of the world to meet you. But I couldn't
have those old men shot in our own house. I realize you've got to
get away. But blood will never wash out blood. Take one of their teams.
Run the horse to the railroad-station. It's only four miles, and
you've got a half-hour before the down-train. And I'll lock 'em into
the setting-room, Aaron, and keep 'em as long as I can. And I'll come
to you, Aaron, though I have to follow you clear around the world."

In the last, desperate straits of an emergency, many a woman's wits
ring truer than a man's. When she had kissed him and departed on her
errand to lock the front door he realized that her counsel was good.

He left the pistols on the wall. As he ran into the yard, he got a
glimpse, through the sitting-room window, of the constables standing
in solemn row. Never were innocent members of committee of
notification more blissfully unconscious of what they had escaped.
They were blandly gazing at the Cap'n's curios ranged on mantel and
what-not.

It was a snort from Constable Swanton that gave the alarm. Mr. Nute's
team was spinning away down the road, the wagon-wheels throwing slush
with a sort of fireworks effect. Cap'n Sproul, like most sailors,
was not a skilful driver, but he was an energetic one. The horse was
galloping.

"He's bound for the town house before he's been notified officially,"
stammered Mr. Swanton.

"It ain't regular," said Constable Wade.

Mr. Nute made no remark. He looked puzzled, but he acted promptly.
He found the front door locked and the kitchen door locked. But the
window-catches were on the inside, and he slammed up the nearest sash
and leaped out. The others followed. The pursuit was on as soon as
they could get to their wagons, Mr. Wade riding with the chief
constable.

The town house of Smyrna is on the main road leading to the
railway-station. The constables, topping a hill an eighth of a mile
behind the fugitive, expected to see him turn in at the town house.
But he tore past, his horse still on the run, the wagon swaying wildly
as he turned the corner beyond the Merrithew sugar orchard.

"Well, I swow," grunted Mr. Nute, and licked on.

The usual crowd of horse-swappers was gathered in the town-house yard,
and beheld this tumultuous passage with professional interest. And,
recognizing the first selectman-elect of Smyrna, their interest had
an added flavor.

Next came the two teams containing the constables, lashing past on
the run. They paid no attention to the amazed yells of inquiry from
the horse-swappers, and disappeared behind the sugar orchard.

"You've got me!" said Uncle Silas Drake to the first out-rush of the
curious from the town house. In his amazement, Uncle Silas was still
holding to the patient nose of the horse whose teeth he had been
examining. "They went past like soft-soap slidin' down the suller
stairs, and that's as fur's I'm knowin'. But I want to remark, as
my personal opinion, that a first seeleckman of this town ought to
be 'tendin' to his duties made and pervided, instead of razooin'
hosses up and down in front of this house when town meetin' is goin'
on."

One by one, voters, mumbling their amazement, unhitched their horses
and started along the highway in the direction the fugitives had
taken. It seemed to all that this case required to be investigated.
The procession whipped along briskly and noisily.

Colonel Gideon Ward, returning from the railroad-station, where he
had been to order flat-cars for lumber, heard the distant clamor of
voices, and stood up in his tall cart to listen. At that instant,
around the bend of the road, twenty feet away, came a horse galloping
wildly. Colonel Ward was halted squarely in the middle of the way.
He caught an amazed glimpse of Cap'n Sproul trying to rein to one
side with unskilled hands, and then the wagons met. Colonel Ward's
wagon stood like a rock. The lighter vehicle, locking wheels, went
down with a crash, and Cap'n Sproul shot head-on over the dasher into
his brother-in-law's lap, as he crouched on his seat.

The advantage was with Cap'n Sproul, for the Colonel was underneath.
Furthermore, Cap'n Sproul was thrice armed with the resolution of
a desperate man. Without an instant's hesitation he drew back, hit
Ward a few resounding buffets on either side of his head, and then
tossed the dizzied man out of his wagon into the roadside slush. An
instant later he had the reins, swung the frightened horse across
the gutter and around into the road, and continued his flight in the
direction of the railroad-station.

The constables, leading the pursuing voters by a few lengths, found
Colonel Ward sitting up in the ditch and gaping in utter amazement
and dire wrath at the turn of the road where Cap'n Sproul had swept
out of sight.

The wreck of the wagon halted them.

"I s'pose you've jest seen our first selectman-elect pass this way,
haven't ye?" inquired Mr. Nute, with official conservatism.

The Colonel had not yet regained his powers of speech. He jabbed with
bony finger in the direction of the railroad, and moved his jaws
voicelessly. Mr. Swanton descended from the wagon, helped him out
of the ditch, and began to stroke the slush from his garments with
mittened hand. As he still continued to gasp ineffectually, Mr. Nute
drove on, leaving him standing by the roadside.

Cap'n Sproul was at bay on the station platform, feet braced
defiantly apart, hat on the back of his head, and desperate resolve
flaming from his eyes.

"Don't ye git out of your wagon, Nute," he rasped. "It's been touch
and go once with the three of ye to-day. I could have killed ye like
sheep. Don't git in my way ag'in. Take warnin'! It's life or death,
and a few more don't make much difference to me now."

The chief constable stared at him with bulging eyes.

"I could have killed ye and I didn't," repeated the Cap'n. "Let that
show ye that I'm square till I have to be otherwise. But I'm a
desp'rit' man, Nute. I'm goin' to take that train." He brandished
his fist at a trail of smoke up behind the spruces. "Gawd pity the
man that gits in my way!"

"Somethin' has happened to his mind all of a sudden," whispered Mr.
Wade. "He ought to be took care of till he gits over it. It would
be a pity and a shame to let a prominent man like that git away and
fall into the hands of strangers."

"All of ye take warnin'," bawled the Cap'n to his townsmen, who were
crowding their wagons into the station square.

Constable Zeburee Nute drove his whip into the socket, threw down
his reins, and stood up. The hollow hoot of the locomotive had sounded
up the track.

"Feller citizens," he cried, "as chairman of the committee of
notification, I desire to report that I have 'tended to my duties
in so far as I could to date. But there has things happened that I
can't figger out, and for which I ain't responsible. There ain't no
time now for ifs, buts, or ands. That train is too near. A certain
prominunt citizen that I don't need to name is thinkin' of takin'
that train when he ain't fit to do so. There'll be time to talk it
over afterward."

Cap'n Sproul was backing away to turn the corner of the station.

"I call on all of ye as a posse," bawled Mr. Nute. "Bring along your
halters and don't use no vi'lence."

Samson himself, even though his weapon had been the jaw-bone of a
megatherium, couldn't have resisted that onrush of the willing
populace. In five minutes, the Cap'n, trussed hand and foot, and
crowded in between Constables Nute and Wade, was riding back toward
Smyrna town house, helpless as a veal calf bound for market.

"Now," resumed Mr. Nute, calmly, "now that you're with us, Cap'n,
and seem to be quieted down a little, I'll perceed to execute the
errunt put upon me as chairman of the notification committee."

With Mr. Wade driving slowly, he read the newspaper clipping that
sounded the clarion call that summoned men of probity to public
office, and at the close formally notified Cap'n Sproul that he had
been elected first selectman of Smyrna. He did all this without
enthusiasm, and sighed with official relief when it was over.

"And," he wound up, "it is the sentiment of this town that there ain't
another man in it so well qualified to lead us up out of the valley
of darkness where we've been wallerin'. We have called our
Cincinnatus to his duty."

They had come around a bend of the road and now faced Colonel Ward,
stumping along stolidly through the slush, following the trail of
his team.

"That's the way he ought to be," roared the Colonel. "Rope him up!
Put ox-chains on him. And I'll give a thousand dollars to build an
iron cage for him. You're all crazy and he's your head lunatic."

Mr. Nute, inwardly, during all the time that he had been so calmly
addressing his captive, was tortured with cruel doubts as to the
Cap'n's sanity. But he believed in discharging his duty first. And
he remembered that insane people were more easily prevailed upon by
those who appeared to make no account of their whims.

During it all, Cap'n Sproul had been silent in utter amazement. The
truth had come in a blinding flash that would have unsettled a man
not so well trained to control emotion.

"Drive along," he curtly commanded Nute, paying no heed to the
incensed Colonel's railings. "You look me in the eye," he continued,
as soon as they were out of hearing. "Do you see any signs that I
am out of my head, or that I need these ropes on me?"

"I can't say as I do," admitted the constable, after he had quailed
a bit under the keen, straightforward stare of the ex-mariner's hard,
gray eyes.

"Take 'em off, then," directed the Cap'n, in tones of authority. And
when it was done, he straightened his hat, set back his shoulders,
and said:

"Drive me to the town house where I was bound when that hoss of yours
run away with me." Mr. Nute stared at him wildly, and drove on.

They were nearly to their destination before Constable Nute ventured
upon what his twisted brow and working lips testified he had been
pondering long.

"It ain't that I'm tryin' to pry into your business, Cap'n Sproul,
nor anything of the kind, but, bein' a man that never intended to
do any harm to any one, I can't figger out what grudge you've got
against me. You said on the station platform that--"

"Nute," said the Cap'n, briskly, "as I understand it, you never went
to sea, and you and the folks round here don't understand much about
sailormen, hey?"

The constable shook his head.

"Then don't try to find out much about 'em. You wouldn't understand.
The folks round here wouldn't understand. We have our ways. You have
your ways. Some of the things you do and some of the things you say
could be called names by me, providin' I wanted to be disagreeable
and pick flaws. All men in this world are different--especially
sailormen from them that have always lived inshore. We've got to take
our feller man as we find him."

They were in the town-house yard--a long procession of teams
following.

"And by-the-way, Nute," bawled the Cap'n, from the steps of the
building as he was going in, using his best sea tones so that all
might hear, "it was the fault of your horse that he run away, and
you ought to be prosecuted for leavin' such an animile 'round where
a sailorman that ain't used to hosses could get holt of him. But I'm
always liberal about other folks' faults. Bring in your bill for the
wagon."

Setting his teeth hard, he walked upon the platform of the town-hall,
and faced the voters with such an air of authority and such
self-possession that they cheered him lustily. And then, with an
intrepidity that filled his secret heart with amazement as he talked,
he made the first real speech of his life--a speech of acceptance.

"Yes, s'r, it was a speech, Louada Murilla," he declared that evening,
as he sat again in their sitting-room with his stockinged feet to
the blaze of the Franklin. "I walked that platform like it was a
quarter-deck, and my line of talk run jest as free as a britches-buoy
coil. And when I got done, they was up on the settees howlin' for
me. If any man came back into that town-house thinkin' I was a lunatic
on account of what happened to-day, they got a diff'runt notion
before I got done. Why, they all come 'round and shook my hand, and
said they must have been crazy to tackle a prominunt citizen that
way on the word of old Nute. It must have been a great speech I made.
They all said so."

He relighted his pipe.

"What did you say, Aaron?" eagerly asked his wife. "Repeat it over."

He smoked awhile.

"Louada Murilla," he said, "when I walked onto that platform my heart
was goin' like a donkey-engine workin' a winch, there was a
sixty-mile gale blowin' past my ears, and a fog-bank was front of
my eyes. And when the sun came out ag'in and it cleared off, the
moderator was standin' there shaking my hand and tellin' me what a
speech it was. It was a speech that had to be made. They had to be
bluffed. But as to knowin' a word of what I said, why, I might jest
as well try to tell you what the mermaid said when the feller brought
her stockin's for her birthday present.

"The only thing that I can remember about that speech," he resumed,
after a pause, and she gazed on him hopefully, "is that your brother
Gideon busted into the town house and tried to break up my speech
by tellin' 'em I was a lunatic. I ordered the constables to put him
out."

"Did they?" she asked, with solicitude.

"No," he replied, rubbing his nose, reflectively. "'Fore the
constables got to him, the boys took holt and throwed him out of the
window. I reckon he's come to a realizin' sense by this time that
the town don't want him for selectman."

He rapped out the ashes and put the pipe on the hearth of the Franklin.

"I'm fair about an enemy, Louada Murilla, and I kind of hate to rub
it into Gideon. But now that I'm on this bluff about what happened
to-day, I've got to work it to a finish. I'm goin' to sue Gid for
obstructin' the ro'd and smashin' Nute's wagon, and then jumpin' out
and leavin' me to be run away with. The idea is, there are some fine
touches needed in lyin' out of that part of the scrape, and, as the
first selectman of Smyrna, I can't afford to take chances and depend
on myself, and be showed up. I don't hold any A.B. certificate when
it comes to lyin'. So for them fancy touches, I reckon I'll have to
break my usual rule and hire a lawyer."

He rose and yawned.

"Is the cat put out, Louada?"

And when she had replied in the affirmative, he said:

"Seein' it has been quite a busy day, let's go to bed."




IX


Mrs. Hiram Look, lately "Widder Snell," appearing as plump, radiant,
and roseate as a bride in her honeymoon should appear--her color
assisted by the caloric of a cook-stove in June--put her head out
of the buttery window and informed the inquiring Cap'n Aaron Sproul
that Hiram was out behind the barn.

"Married life seems still to be agreein' with all concerned,"
suggested Cap'n Sproul, quizzically. "Even that flour on your nose
is becomin'."

"Go 'long, you old rat!" tittered Mrs. Look. "Better save all your
compliments for your own wife!"

"Oh, I tell her sweeter things than that," replied the Cap'n,
serenely. With a grin under his beard, he went on toward the barn.

Smyrna gossips were beginning to comment, with more or less spite,
on the sudden friendship between their first selectman and Hiram Look,
since Look--once owner of a road circus--had retired from the road,
had married his old love, and had settled down on the Snell farm.
Considering the fact that the selectman and showman had bristled at
each other like game-cocks the first time they met, Smyrna wondered
at the sudden effusion of affection that now kept them trotting back
and forth on almost daily visits to each other.

Batson Reeves, second selectman of Smyrna, understood better than
most of the others. It was on him as a common anvil that the two of
them had pounded their mutual spite cool. Hiram, suddenly
reappearing with a plug hat and a pet elephant, after twenty years
of wandering, had won promptly the hand of Widow Snell, _nee_ Amanda
Purkis, whose self and whose acres Widower Reeves was just ready to
annex. And Hiram had thereby partially satisfied the old boyhood
grudge planted deep in his stormy temper when Batson Reeves had
broken up the early attachment between Hiram Look and Amanda Purkis.
As for First Selectman Sproul, hot in his fight with Reeves for
official supremacy, his league with Hiram, after an initial combat
to try spurs, was instant and cordial as soon as he had understood
a few things about the showman's character and purpose.

"Birds of a feather!" gritted Reeves, in his confidences with his
intimates. "An' old turkle-back of a sea-capt'in runnin' things in
this town 'fore he's been here two years, jest 'cause he's got cheek
enough and thutty thousand dollars--and now comes that old gas-bag
with a plug hat on it, braggin' of his own thutty thousand dollars,
and they hitch up! Gawd help Smyrna, that's all I say!"

And yet, had all the spiteful eyes in Smyrna peered around the corner
of the barn on that serene June forenoon, they must have softened
just a bit at sight of the placid peace of it all.

The big doors were rolled back, and "Imogene," the ancient elephant
whose fond attachment to Hiram had preserved her from the
auction-block, bent her wrinkled front to the soothing sunshine and
"weaved" contentedly on her slouchy legs. She was watching her master
with the thorough appreciation of one who has understood and loved
the "sportin' life."

Hiram was in shirt-sleeves and bareheaded, his stringy hair combed
over his bald spot. His long-tailed coat and plug hat hung from a
wooden peg on the side of the barn. In front of him was a loose square
of burlap, pegged to the ground at one edge, its opposite edge nailed
to the barn, and sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees.

As Cap'n Sproul rounded the corner Hiram had just tossed a rooster
in the air over the burlap. The bird came down flapping its wings;
its legs stuck out stiffly. When it struck the rude net it bounded
high, and came down again, and continued its grotesque hornpipe until
it finally lost its spring.

"I'm only givin' P.T. Barnum his leg-exercise," said Hiram,
recovering the rooster and sticking him under one arm while he shook
hands with his caller. "I don't expect to ever match him again in
this God-forsaken country, but there's some comfort in keepin' him
in trainin'. Pinch them thighs, Cap'n! Ain't they the wickin'?"

"I sh'd hate to try to eat 'em," said the Cap'n, gingerly poking his
stubby finger against the rooster's leg.

"Eat 'em!" snapped the showman, raking the horns of his long mustache
irritably away from his mouth. "You talk like the rest of these
farmers round here that never heard of a hen bein' good for anything
except to lay eggs and be et for a Thanksgivin' dinner." He held the
rooster a-straddle his arm, his broad hand on its back, and shook
him under the Cap'n's nose. "I've earnt more'n a thousand dollars
with P.T.--and that's a profit in the hen business that all the
condition powders this side of Tophet couldn't fetch."

"A thousand dollars!" echoed Cap'n Sproul, stuffing his pipe. He
gazed at P.T. with new interest. "He must have done some fightin'
in his day."

"Fight!" cried the showman. He tossed the rooster upon the burlap
once more. "Fight! Look at that leg action! That's the best
yaller-legged, high-station game-cock that ever pecked his way out
of a shell. I've taken all comers 'twixt Hoorah and Hackenny, and
he ain't let me down yet. Look at them brad-awls of his!"

"Mebbe all so, but I don't like hens, not for a minit," growled the
first selectman, squinting sourly through his tobacco-smoke at the
dancing fowl.

Hiram got a saucer from a shelf inside the barn and set it on the
ground.

"Eat your chopped liver, P.T.," he commanded; "trainin' is over."

He relighted his stub of cigar and bent proud gaze on the bird.

"No, sir," pursued the Cap'n, "I ain't got no use for a hen unless
it's settin', legs up, on a platter, and me with a carvin'-knife."

"Always felt that way?" inquired Hiram.

"Not so much as I have sence I've been tryin' to start my garden this
spring. As fur back as the time I was gittin' the seed in, them hens
of Widder Sidene Pike, that lives next farm to mine, began their
hellishness, with that old wart-legged ostrich of a rooster of her'n
to lead 'em. They'd almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the
minit I'd turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot,
left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners--and you couldn't
see the sun for dirt. And at every rake that rooster lifts soil enough
to fill a stevedore's coal-bucket."

"Why don't you shoot 'em?" advised Hiram, calmly.

"Me--the first s'lectman of this town out poppin' off a widder's
hens? That would be a nice soundin' case when it got into court,
wouldn't it?"

"Get into court first and sue her," advised the militant Hiram.

"I donno as I've ever said it to you, but I've al'ays said it to close
friends," stated the Cap'n, earnestly, "that there are only three
things on earth I'm afraid of, and them are: pneumony, bein' struck
by lightnin', and havin' a land-shark git the law on me. There ain't
us'ly no help for ye."

He sighed and smoked reflectively. Then his face hardened.

"There's grown to be more to it lately than the hen end. Have you
heard that sence Bat Reeves got let down by she that was Widder
Snell"--he nodded toward the house--"he has been sort of caught on
the bounce, as ye might say, by the Widder Pike? Well, bein' her close
neighbor, I know it's so. And, furdermore, the widder's told my wife,
bein' so tickled over ketchin' him that she couldn't hold it to
herself. Now, for the last week, every time that old red-gilled
dirt-walloper has led them hens into my garden, I've caught Bat
Reeves peekin' around the corner of the widder's house watchin' 'em.
If there's any such thing as a man bein' able to talk human language
to a rooster, and put sin and Satan into him, Reeves is doin' it.
But what's the good of my goin' and lickin' him? It'll mean law.
That's what he's lookin' for--and him with that old gandershanked
lawyer for a brother! See what they done to you!"

Hiram's eyes grew hard, and he muttered irefully. For cuffing Batson
Reeves off the Widow Snell's door-step he had paid a fat fine,
assessed for the benefit of the assaulted, along with liberal costs
allowed to Squire Alcander Reeves.

"They can't get any of my money that way," pursued the Cap'n. "I'd
pay suthin' for the privilege of drawin' and quarterin' him, but a
plain lickin' ain't much object. A lickin' does him good."

"And it's so much ready money for that skunk," added the showman.
He cocked his head to one side to avoid his cigar smoke, and stared
down on P.T. pecking the last scraps of raw liver from the saucer.

"I understand you to say, do I," resumed Hiram, "that he is shooing
them hens--or, at least, condonin' their comin' down into your garden
ev'ry day?"

"I run full half a mile jest before I came acrost to see you, chasin'
'em out," said the Cap'n, gloomily, "and I'll bet they was back in
there before I got to the first bars on my way over here."

P.T., feeling the stimulus of the liver, crooked his neck and crowed
spiritedly. Then he scratched the side of his head with one toe, shook
himself, and squatted down contentedly in the sun.

"In the show business," said Hiram, "when I found a feller with a
game that I could play better 'n him, I was always willin' to play
his game." He stuck up his hand with the fingers spread like a fan,
and began to check items. "A gun won't do, because it's a widder's
hens; a fight won't do, because it's Bat Reeves; law won't do, because
he's got old heron-legged Alcander right in his family. Now this
thing is gittin' onto your sperits, and I can see it!"

"It is heiferin' me bad," admitted the Cap'n. "It ain't so much the
hens--though Gawd knows I hate a hen bad enough--but it's Bat Reeves
standin' up there grinnin' and watchin' me play tag-you're-it with
Old Scuff-and-kick and them female friends of his. For a man that's
dreamed of garden-truck jest as he wants it, and never had veg'tables
enough in twenty years of sloshin' round the world on shipboard, it's
about the most cussed, aggravatin' thing I ever got against. And
there I am! Swear and chase--and northin' comin' of it!"

Hiram clenched his cigar more firmly in his teeth, leaned over
carefully, and picked up the recumbent P.T.

He tucked the rooster under his arm and started off.

"Let's go 'crost back lots," he advised. "What people don't see and
don't know about won't hurt 'em, and that includes your wife and mine.

"It won't be no kind of a hen-fight, you understand," Hiram chatted
as they walked, "'cause that compost-heap scratcher won't last so
long as old Brown stayed in heaven. For P.T., here, it will be jest
bristle, shuffle, one, two--brad through each eye,
and--'Cock-a-doodle-doo!' All over! But it will give you a chance
to see some of his leg-work, and a touch or two of his fancy
spurrin'--and then you can take old Sculch-scratcher by the legs and
hold him up and inform Bat Reeves that he can come and claim property.
It's his own game--and we're playin' it! There ain't any chance for
law where one rooster comes over into another rooster's yard and gets
done up. Moral: Keep roosters in where the lightnin' won't strike
'em."

When they topped Hickory Hill they had a survey of Cap'n Sproul's
acres. Here and there on the brown mould of his garden behind the
big barn were scattered yellow and gray specks.

"There they be, blast 'em to fury!" growled the Cap'n.

His eyes then wandered farther, as though seeking something familiar,
and he clutched the showman's arm as they walked along.

"And there's Bat Reeves's gray hoss hitched in the widder's
dooryard."

"Mebbe he'll wait and have fricasseed rooster for dinner," suggested
Hiram, grimly. "That's all his rooster'll be good for in fifteen
minutes."

"It would be the devil and repeat for us if the widder's rooster
should lick--and Bat Reeves standin' and lookin' on," suggested the
Cap'n, bodingly.

Hiram stopped short, looked this faltering faint-heart all over from
head to heel with withering scorn, and demanded: "Ain't you got
sportin' blood enough to know the difference between a high-station
game-cock and that old bow-legged Mormon down there scratchin' your
garden-seeds?"

"Well," replied the Cap'n, rather surlily, "I ain't to blame for what
I don't know about, and I don't know about hens, and I don't want
to know. But I do know that he's more'n twice as big as your rooster,
and he's had exercise enough in my garden this spring to be more'n
twice as strong. All is, don't lay it to me not warnin' you, if you
lose your thousand-dollar hen!"

"Don't you wear your voice out tryin' to tell me about my business
in the hen-fightin' line," snapped the showman, fondly "huggling"
P.T. more closely under his arm. "This is where size don't count.
It's skill. There won't be enough to call it a scrap."

They made a detour through the Sproul orchard to avoid possible
observation by Louada Murilla, the Cap'n's wife, and by so doing
showed themselves plainly to any one who might be looking that way
from the widow's premises. This was a part of the showman's plan.
He hoped to attract Reeves's attention. He did. They saw him peering
under his palm from the shed door, evidently suspecting that this
combination of his two chief foes meant something sinister. He came
out of the shed and walked down toward the fence when he saw them
headed for the garden.

"Watchin' out for evidence in a law case, probably," growled Cap'n
Sproul, the fear of onshore artfulness ever with him. "He'd ruther
law it any time than have a fair fight, man to man, and that's the
kind of a critter I hate."

"The widder's lookin' out of the kitchen winder," Hiram announced,
"and I'm encouraged to think that mebbe he'll want to shine a little
as her protector, and will come over into the garden to save her hen.
Then will be your time. He'll be trespassin', and I'll be your witness.
Go ahead and baste the stuffin' out of him."

He squatted down at the edge of the garden-patch, holding the
impatient P.T. between his hands.

"Usually in a reg'lar match I scruffle his feathers and blow in his
eye, Cap'n, but I won't have to do it this time. It's too easy a
proposition. I'm jest tellin' you about it so that if you ever git
interested in fightin' hens after this, you'll be thankful to me for
a pointer or two."

"I won't begin to take lessons yet a while," the Cap'n grunted. "It
ain't in my line."

Hiram tossed his feathered gladiator out upon the garden mould.

"S-s-s-s-! Eat him up, boy!" he commanded.

P.T. had his eye on the foe, but, with the true instinct of sporting
blood, he would take no unfair advantage by stealthy advance on the
preoccupied scratcher. He straddled, shook out his glossy ruff, and
crowed shrilly.

The other rooster straightened up from his agricultural labors, and
stared at this lone intruder on his family privacy. He was a tall,
rakish-looking fowl, whose erect carriage and lack of tail-feathers
made him look like a spindle-shanked urchin as he towered there among
the busy hens.

In order that there might be no mistake as to his belligerent
intentions, P.T. crowed again.

The other replied with a sort of croupy hoarseness.

"Sounds like he was full to the neck with your garden-seeds,"
commented Hiram. "Well, he won't ever eat no more, and that's
something to be thankful for."

The game-cock, apparently having understood the word to come on,
tiptoed briskly across the garden. The other waited his approach,
craning his long neck and twisting his head from side to side.

Reeves was now at the fence.

"I'll bet ye ten dollars," shouted Hiram, "that down goes your hen
the first shuffle."

"You will, hey?" bawled Reeves, sarcastically. "Say, you didn't
bring them three shells and rubber pea that you used to make your
livin' with, did ye?"

The old showman gasped, and his face grew purple. "I licked him twenty
years ago for startin' that lie about me," he said, bending blazing
glance on the Cap'n. "Damn the expense! I'm goin' over there and kill
him!"

"Wait till your rooster kills his, and then take the remains and bat
his brains out with 'em," advised the Cap'n, swelling with equal
wrath. "Look! He's gettin' at him!"

P.T. put his head close to the ground, his ring of neck-feathers
glistening in the sun, then darted forward, rising in air as he did
so. The other rooster, who had been awaiting his approach, stiffly
erect, ducked to one side, and the game-cock went hurtling past.

"Like rooster, like master!" Hiram yelled, savagely. "He's a coward.
Why don't he run and git your brother, Alcander, to put P.T. under
bonds to keep the peace? Yah-h-h-h! You're all cowards."

The game-cock, accustomed to meet the bravery of true champions of
the pit, stood for a little while and stared at this shifty foe. He
must have decided that he was dealing with a poltroon with whom
science and prudence were not needed. He stuck out his neck and ran
at Long-legs, evidently expecting that Long-legs would turn and flee
in a panic. Long-legs jumped to let him pass under, and came down
on the unwary P.T. with the crushing force of his double bulk. The
splay feet flattened the game-cock to the ground, and, while he lay
there helpless, this victor-by-a-fluke began to peck and tear at his
head and comb in a most brutal and unsportsmanlike manner.

With a hoarse howl of rage and concern, Hiram rushed across the garden,
the dirt flying behind him. The hens squawked and fled, and the
conqueror, giving one startled look at the approaching vengeance,
abandoned his victim, and closed the line of retreat over the fence.

"He didn't git at his eyes," shouted Hiram, grabbing up his champion
from the dirt, "but"--making hasty survey of the bleeding head--"but
the jeebingoed cannibal has et one gill and pretty near pecked his
comb off. It wa'n't square! It wa'n't square!" he bellowed, advancing
toward the fence where Reeves was leaning. "Ye tried to kill a
thousand-dollar bird by a skin-game, and I'll have it out of your
hide."

Reeves pulled a pole out of the fence.

"Don't ye come across here," he gritted. "I'll brain ye! It was your
own rooster-fight. You put it up. You got licked. What's the matter
with you?" A grin of pure satisfaction curled under his beard.

"You never heard of true sport. You don't know what it means. He stood
on him and started to eat him. All he thinks of is eatin' up something.
It wa'n't fair." Hiram caressed the bleeding head of P.T. with
quivering hand.

"Fair!" sneered Reeves. "You're talkin' as though this was a
prize-fight for the championship of the world! My--I mean, Mis'
Pike's rooster licked, didn't he? Well, when a rooster's licked, he's
licked, and there ain't nothin' more to it."

"That's your idee of sport, is it?" demanded Hiram, stooping to wipe
his bloody hand on the grass.

"It's my idee of a rooster-fight," retorted Reeves. In his triumph
he was not unwilling to banter repartee with the hateful Hiram. "You
fellers with what you call sportin' blood"--he sneered the
words--"come along and think nobody else can't do anything right but
you. You fetch along cat-meat with feathers on it"--he pointed at
the vanquished P.T.--"and expect it to stand any show with a real
fighter." Now he pointed to the Widow Pike's rooster sauntering away
with his harem about him. "He ain't rid' around with a circus nor
followed the sportin' life, and he's al'ays lived in the country and
minded his own business, but he's good for a whole crateful of your
sportin' blooders--and so long as he licks, it don't make no
difference how he does it."

The personal reference in this little speech was too plain for Hiram
to disregard.

His hard eyes narrowed, and hatred of this insolent countryman blazed
there. The countryman glared back with just as fierce bitterness.

"Mebbe you've got money to back your opinion of Widder Pike's hen
there?" suggested the showman. "Money's the only thing that seems
to interest you, and you don't seem to care how you make it."

Reeves glanced from the maimed P.T., gasping on Hiram's arm, to the
victorious champion who had defeated this redoubtable bird so easily.
His Yankee shrewdness told him that the showman had undoubtedly
produced his best for this conflict; his Yankee cupidity hinted that
by taking advantage of Hiram's present flustered state of mind he
might turn a dollar. He glanced from Hiram to Cap'n Sproul, standing
at one side, and said with careless superiority:

"Make your talk!"

"I've got five hundred that says I've got the best hen."

"There ain't goin' to be no foolishness about rules and sport, and
hitchin' and hawin', is there? It's jest hen that counts!"

"Jest hen!" Hiram set his teeth hard.

"Five hundred it is," agreed Reeves. "But I need a fortni't to collect
in some that's due me. Farmin' ain't such ready-money as the circus
bus'ness."

"Take your fortni't! And we'll settle place later. And that's all,
'cause it makes me sick to stand anywhere within ten feet of you."

Hiram strode away across the fields, his wounded gladiator on his
arm.

And, as it was near dinner-time, Cap'n Sproul trudged into his own
house, his mien thoughtful and his air subdued.

On his next visit to Hiram, the Cap'n didn't know which was the most
preoccupied--the showman sitting in the barn door at Imogene's feet,
or the battered P.T. propped disconsolately on one leg. Both were
gazing at the ground with far-away stare, and Hiram was not much more
conversational than the rooster.

The next day Hiram drove into the Sproul dooryard and called out the
Cap'n, refusing to get out of his wagon.

"I shall be away a few days--mebbe more, mebbe less. I leave time
and place to you." And he slashed at his horse and drove away.




X


It was certainly a queer place that Cap'n Sproul decided upon after
several days of rumination. His own abstraction during that time,
and the unexplained absence of Hiram, the bridegroom of a month, an
absence that was prolonged into a week, caused secret tears and
apprehensive imaginings in both households.

Hiram came back, mysterious as the Sphinx.

Cap'n Sproul arranged for a secret meeting of the principals behind
his barn, and announced his decision as to place.

"The poor-farm!" both snorted in unison. "What--"

"Hold right on!" interrupted the Cap'n, holding up his broad palms;
"it can't be in _his_ barn on account of his wife; it can't be in
_my_ barn on account of my wife. Both of 'em are all wrought up and
suspectin' somethin'. Some old pick-ed nose in this place is bound
to see us if we try to sneak away into the woods. Jim Wixon, the
poor-farm keeper, holds his job through me. He's square, straight,
and minds his own business. I can depend on him. He'll hold the stakes.
There ain't another man in town we can trust. There ain't a place
as safe as the poor-farm barn. Folks don't go hangin' round a
poor-farm unless they have to. It's for there the ev'nin' before the
Fourth. Agree, or count me out. The first selectman of this town can't
afford to take too many chances, aidin' and abettin' a hen-fight."

Therefore there was nothing else for it. The principals accepted
sullenly, and went their ways.

The taciturnity of Hiram Look was such during the few days before
the meeting that Cap'n Sproul regretfully concluded to keep to his
own hearthstone. Hiram seemed to be nursing a secret. The Cap'n felt
hurt, and admitted as much to himself in his musings.

He went alone to the rendezvous at early dusk. Keeper Wixon, of the
poor-farm, had the big floor of the barn nicely swept, had hung
lanterns about on the wooden harness-pegs, and was in a state of great
excitement and impatience.

Second Selectman Reeves came first, lugging his crate from his
beach-wagon. The crate held the Widow Pike's rooster. His nomination
had his head up between the slats, and was crowing regularly and
raucously.

"Choke that dam fog-horn off!" commanded the Cap'n. "What are ye
tryin' to do, advertise this sociable?"

"You talk like I was doin' that crowin' myself," returned Reeves,
sulkily. "And nobody ain't goin' to squat his wizen and git him out
of breath. Hands off, and a fair show!"

Hiram Look was no laggard at the meeting. He rumbled into the yard
on the box of one of his animal cages, pulled out a huge bag containing
something that kicked and wriggled, and deposited his burden on the
barn floor.

"Now," said he, brusquely, "business before pleasure! You've got the
stakes, eh, Wixon?"

"In my wallet here--a thousand dollars," replied the keeper, a little
catch in his voice at thought of the fortune next his anxious heart.

"And the best hen takes the money; no flummery, no filigree!" put
in Reeves.

Hiram was kneeling beside his agitated bag, and was picking at the
knots in its fastening. "This will be a hen-fight served up Smyrna
style," he said, grimly. "And, as near as I can find out, that style
is mostly--scrambled!"

"I've got a favor to ask," stammered Wixon, hesitatingly. "It don't
mean much to you, but it means a good deal to others. Bein' penned
up on a poor-farm, with nothin' except three meals a day to take up
your mind, is pretty tough on them as have seen better days. I'll
leave it to Cap'n Sproul, here, if I ain't tried to put a little
kindness and human feelin' into runnin' this place, and--"

Hiram was untying the last knot. "Spit out what you're drivin' at,"
he cried bluntly; "this ain't no time for sideshow barkin'. The big
show is about to begin."

"I want to invite in the boys," blurted Wixon. And when they blinked
at him amazedly, he said:

"The five old fellers that's here, I mean. They're safe and mum, and
they're jest dyin' for a little entertainment, and it's only kindness
to them that's unfortunate, if you--"

"What do you think this is, a livin'-picture show got up to amuse
a set of droolin' old paupers?" demanded Hiram, with heat.

"Well, as it is, they suspect suthin'," persisted Wixon. "All they
have to do to pass time is to suspect and projick on what's goin'
on and what's goin' to happen. If you'll let me bring 'em, I can shet
their mouths. If they don't come in, they're goin' to suspect suthin'
worse than what it is--and that's only human natur'--and not to blame
for it."

The two selectmen protested, official alarm in their faces, but Hiram
suddenly took the keeper's side, after the manner of his impetuous
nature, and after he had shrewdly noted that Reeves seemed to be most
alarmed.

"I'm the challenger," he roared. "I've got something to say. Bring
'em, Wixon. Let 'em have a taste of fun. I may wind up on the poor-farm
myself. Bring 'em in. There's prob'ly more sportin' blood in the
paupers of this town than in the citizens. Bring 'em in, and let's
have talkin' done with."

In a suspiciously short time Wixon led in his charges--five hobbling
old men, all chewing tobacco and looking wondrously interested.

"There!" said Hiram, an appreciative glint in his eyes. "Nothin' like
havin' an audience, even if they did come in on passes. I've never
given a show before empty benches yet. And now, gents"--the old
spirit of the "barker" entered into him--"you are about to behold
a moral and elevatin' exhibition of the wonders of natur'. I have
explored the jungles of Palermo, the hills of Peru Corners, the
valleys of North Belgrade, never mindin' time and expense, and I've
got something that beats the wild boy Tom and his little sister Mary.
Without takin' more of your valuable time, I will now present to your
attention"--he tore open the bag--"Cap'n Kidd, the Terror of the
Mountains."

The wagging jaws of the old paupers stopped as if petrified. Keeper
Wixon peered under his hand and retreated a few paces. Even doughty
Cap'n Sproul, accustomed to the marvels of land and sea, snapped his
eyes. As for Reeves, he gasped "Great gorlemity!" under his breath,
and sat down on the edge of his crate, as though his legs had given
out.

The creature that rose solemnly up from the billowing folds of the
bagging had a head as smooth and round as a door-knob, dangling,
purple wattles under its bill, and breast of a sanguinary red, picked
clean of feathers. There were not many feathers on the fowl, anyway.
Its tail was merely a spreading of quills like spikes. It was propped
on legs like stilts, and when it stretched to crow it stood up as
tall as a yard-stick.

"Let out your old doostrabulus, there!" Hiram commanded.

"That ain't no hen," wailed his adversary.

"It's got two legs, a bill, and a place for tail-feathers, and that's
near enough to a hen for fightin' purposes in this town--accordin'
to what I've seen of the sport here," insisted the showman. "The
principal hen-fightin' science in Smyrna seems to be to stand on t'
other hen and peck him to pieces! Well, Reeves, Cap'n Kidd there ain't
got so much pedigree as some I've owned, but as a stander and pecker
I'm thinkin' he'll give a good, fair account of himself."

"It's a gum-game," protested Reeves, agitatedly, "and I ain't goin'
to fight no ostrich nor hen-hawk."

"Then I'll take the stakes without further wear or tear," said Hiram.
"Am I right, boys?" A unanimous chorus indorsed him. "And this here
is something that I reckon ye won't go to law about," the showman
went on, ominously, "even if you have got a lawyer in the family.
You ketch, don't you?"

The unhappy second selectman realized his situation, sighed, and
pried a slat off the crate. His nomination was more sanguine than
he. The rooster hopped upon the crate, crowed, and stalked out onto
the barn floor with a confidence that made Reeves perk up courage
a bit.

Cap'n Kidd showed abstraction rather than zeal. He was busily engaged
in squinting along his warty legs, and at last detected two or three
objects that were annoying him. He picked them off leisurely. Then
he ran his stiff and scratchy wing down his leg, yawned, and seemed
bored.

When the other rooster ran across and pecked him viciously on his
red expanse of breast, he cocked his head sideways and looked down
wonderingly on this rude assailant. Blood trickled from the wound,
and Reeves giggled nervously. Cap'n Sproul muttered something and
looked apprehensive, but Hiram, his eyes hard and his lips set,
crouched at the side of the floor, and seemed to be waiting
confidently.

Widow Pike's favorite stepped back, rapped his bill on the floor
several times, and then ran at his foe once more. A second trail of
blood followed his blow. This time the unknown ducked his knobby head
at the attacker. It looked like a blow with a slung-shot. But it
missed, and Reeves tittered again.

"Fly up and peck his eye out, Pete!" he called, cheerily.

It is not likely that Peter understood this adjuration,
notwithstanding Cap'n Sproul's gloomy convictions on that score in
the past. But, apparently having tested the courage of this enemy,
he changed his tactics, leaped, and flew at Cap'n Kidd with spurring
feet.

Then it happened!

It happened almost before the little group of spectators could gasp.

Cap'n Kidd threw himself back on the bristling spines of his tail,
both claws off the floor. Peter's spurring feet met only empty air,
and he fell on the foe.

Foe's splay claws grabbed him around the neck and clutched him like
a vise, shutting off his last, startled squawk. Then Cap'n Kidd
darted forward that knobby head with its ugly beak, and tore off
Peter's caput with one mighty wrench.

"'Tain't fair! It's jest as I said it was! 'Tain't square!" screamed
Reeves.

But Hiram strode forward, snapping authoritative fingers under
Wixon's nose. "Hand me that money!" he gritted, and Wixon, his eyes
on the unhappy bird writhing in Cap'n Kidd's wicked grasp, made no
demur. The showman took it, even as the maddened Reeves was clutching
for the packet, tucked it into his breast pocket, and drove the second
selectman back with a mighty thrust of his arm. The selectman
stumbled over the combatants and sat down with a shock that clicked
his teeth. Cap'n Kidd fled from under, and flew to a high beam.

"He ain't a hen!" squalled Reeves.

At that moment the barn door was opened from the outside, and through
this exit Cap'n Kidd flapped with hoarse cries, whether of triumph
or fright no one could say.

The lanterns' light shone on Widow Sidenia Pike, her face white from
the scare "Cap'n Kidd's" rush past her head had given her, but with
determination written large in her features.

She gazed long at Reeves, sitting on the floor beside the defunct
rooster. She pointed an accusatory finger at it.

"Mr. Reeves," she said, "you've been lyin' to me two weeks, tryin'
to buy that rooster that I wouldn't sell no more'n I'd sell my first
husband's gravestun'. And when you couldn't git it by lyin', you
stole it off'm the roost to-night. And to make sure there won't be
any more lies, I've followed you right here to find out the truth.
Now what does this mean?"

There was a soulful pause.

"Lie in small things, lie in big!" she snapped. "I reckon I've found
ye out for a missabul thing!"

Hiram, standing back in the shadows, nudged Cap'n Sproul beside him,
and wagged his head toward the open door. They went out on tiptoe.

"If he wants to lie some more, our bein' round might embarrass him,"
whispered Hiram. "I never like to embarrass a man when he's
down--and--and her eyes was so much on Reeves and the rooster I don't
believe she noticed us. And what she don't know won't hurt her none.
But"--he yawned--"I shouldn't be a mite surprised if another one of
Bat Reeves's engagements was busted in this town. He don't seem to
have no luck at all in marryin' farms with the wimmen throwed in."
The Cap'n didn't appear interested in Reeves's troubles. His eyes
were searching the dim heavens.

"What do you call that thing you brought in the bag?" he demanded.

"Blamed if I know!" confessed Hiram, climbing upon his chariot. "And
I'm pretty well up on freaks, too, as a circus man ought to be. I
jest went out huntin' for suthin' to fit in with the sportin' blood
as I found it in this place--and I reckon I got it! Mebbe 'twas a
cassowary, mebbe 'twas a dodo--the man himself didn't know--said
even the hen that hatched it didn't seem to know. 'Pologized to me
for asking me two dollars for it, and I gave him five. I hope it will
go back where it come from. It hurt my eyes to look at it. But it
was a good bargain!" He patted his breast pocket.

"Come over to-morrow," he called to the Cap'n as he drove away. "I
sha'n't have so much on my mind, and I'll be a little more sociable!
Listen to that bagpipe selection!"

Behind them they heard the whining drone of a man's pleading voice
and a woman's shrill, insistent tones, a monotony of sound flowing
on--and on--and on!




XI


The president of the "Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents' Driving
Association" had been carrying something on his mind throughout the
meeting of the trustees of the society--the last meeting before the
date advertised for the fair. And now, not without a bit of
apprehensiveness, he let it out.

"I've invited the Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford to act as the
starter and one of the judges of the races," he announced.

Trustee Silas Wallace, superintendent of horses, had put on his hat.
Now he took it off again.

"What!" he almost squalled.

"You see," explained the president, with eager conciliatoriness,
"we've only got to scratch his back just a little to have him--"

"Why, 'Kittle-belly' Bickford don't know no more about hoss-trottin'
than a goose knows about the hard-shell Baptist doctrine," raved
Wallace, his little eyes popping like marbles.

"I don't like to hear a man that's done so much for his native town
called by any such names," retorted the president, ready to show
temper himself, to hide his embarrassment. "He's come back here
and--"

Trustee Wallace now stood up and cracked his bony knuckles on the
table, his weazened face puckered with angry ridges.

"I don't need to have a printed catalogue of what Jabe Bickford has
done for this town. And I don't need to be told what he's done it
for. He's come back from out West, where he stole more money than
he knew what to do with, and--"

"I protest!" cried President Thurlow Kitchen. "When you say that the
Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford has stolen--"

"Well, promoted gold-mines, then! It's only more words to say the
same thing. And he's back here spendin' his loose change for daily
doses of hair-oil talk fetched to him by the beggin' old suckers of
this place."

"I may be a beggin' old sucker," flared the president, "but I've had
enterprise enough and interest in this fair enough to get Mr.
Bickford to promise us a present of a new exhibition hall, and it's
only right to extend some courtesy to him in return."

"It was all right to make him president of the lib'ry association
when he built the lib'ry, make him a deacon when he gave the organ
for the meetin'-house, give him a banquet and nineteen speeches
tellin' him he was the biggest man on earth when he put the stone
watering-trough in--all that was all right for them that thought it
was all right. But when you let 'Kittle-belly' Bickford--"

"Don't you call him that," roared President Kitchen, thumping the
table.

"Duke, then! Dammit, crown him lord of all! But when you let him hang
that pod of his out over the rail of that judges' stand and bust up
a hoss-trot programmy that I've been three months gettin' entries
for--and all jest so he can show off a white vest and a plug hat and
a new gold stop-watch and have the band play 'Hail to the Chief'--I
don't stand for it--no, sir!"

"The trouble is with you," retorted the president with spirit,
"you've razoo-ed and hoss-jockeyed so long you've got the idea that
all there is to a fair is a plug of chaw-tobacco, a bag of peanuts,
and a posse of nose-whistlin' old pelters skatin' round a half-mile
track."

"And you and 'Kit'--you and Duke Jabe, leave you alone to run a
fair--wouldn't have northin' but his new exhibition hall filled with
croshayed tidies and hooked rugs."

"Well, I move," broke in Trustee Dunham, "that we git som'ers. I'm
personally in favor of pleasin' Honer'ble Bickford and takin' the
exhibition hall."

"That's right! That's business!" came decisive chorus from the other
three trustees. "Let's take the hall."

Wallace doubled his gaunt form, propped himself on the table by his
skinny arms, and stared from face to face in disgust unutterable.

"Take it?" he sneered. "Why, you'll take anything! You're takin' up
the air in this room, like pumpin' up a sulky tire, and ain't lettin'
it out again! Good-day! I'm goin' out where I can get a full breath."

He whirled on them at the door.

"But you hark to what I'm predictin' to you! If you don't wish the
devil had ye before you're done with that old balloon with a plug
hat on it in your judges' stand, then I'll trot an exhibition half
mile on my hands and knees against Star Pointer for a bag of oats.
And I'm speakin' for all the hossmen in this county."

When this uncomfortable Jeremiah had departed, leaving in his wake
a trailing of oaths and a bouquet of stable aroma, the trustees showed
relief, even if enthusiasm was notably absent.

"It's going to raise the tone of the fair, having him in the
stand--there ain't any getting round that," said the president. "The
notion seemed to strike him mighty favorable. 'It's an idea!' said
he to me. 'Yes, a real idea. I will have other prominent gentlemen
to serve with me, and we will be announced as paytrons of the races.
That will sound well, I think.' And he asked me what two men in town
was best fixed financially, and, of course, I told him Cap'n Aaron
Sproul, our first selectman, and Hiram Look. He said he hadn't been
in town long enough to get real well acquainted with either of them
yet, but hoped they were gentlemen. I told him they were. I reckon
that being skipper of a ship and ownin' a circus stands as high as
the gold-mine business."

"Well," said one of the trustees, with some venom, "Jabe Bickford
is doin' a good deal for this town, one way and another, but he wants
to remember that his gran'ther had to call on us for town aid, and
that there wa'n't nary ever another Bickford that lived in this town
or went out of it, except Jabe, that could get trusted for a barrel
of flour. Puttin' on his airs out West is all right, but puttin' 'em
on here to home, among us that knows him and all his breed, is makin'
some of the old residents kind of sick. Si Wallace hadn't ought to
call him by that name he did, but Si is talkin' the way a good many
feel."

"If an angel from heaven should descend on this town with the gift
of abidin' grace," said President Kitchen, sarcastically, "a lot of
folks here would get behind his back and make faces at him."

"Prob'ly would," returned the trustee, imperturbably, "if said angel
wore a plug hat and kid gloves from mornin' till night, said 'Me good
man' to old codgers who knowed him when he had stone-bruises on his
heels as big as pigeon's aigs, and otherwise acted as though he was
cream and every one else was buttermilk."

"Well, when some of the rest of you have done as much for this town
as Honer'ble Bickford," broke in the president, testily, "you can
have the right to criticise. As it is, I can't see anything but
jealousy in it. And I've heard enough of it. Now, to make this thing
all pleasant and agreeable to the Honer'ble Bickford, we've got to
have Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look act as judges with him. 'Tis a vote!
Now, who will see Cap'n Sproul and--"

"Considerin' what has happened to those who have in times past tried
to notify Cap'n Sproul of honors tendered to him in this town, you'd
better pick out some one who knows how to use the wireless telegraph,"
suggested one of the trustees.

"There won't be any trouble in gettin' Hiram Look to act," said the
president. "He's just enough of a circus feller to like to stand up
before the crowd and show authority. Well, then"--the president's
wits were sharpened by his anxiety over the proposed exhibition
hall--"let Mr. Look arrange it with Cap'n Sproul. They're suckin'
cider through the same straw these days."

And this suggestion was so eminently good that the meeting adjourned
in excellent humor that made light of all the gloomy prognostications
of Trustee Wallace.

As though good-fortune were in sooth ruling the affairs of the Smyrna
A.F. & G.D.A., Hiram Look came driving past as the trustees came out
of the tavern, their meeting-place.

He stroked his long mustache and listened. At first his silk hat stuck
up rigidly, but soon it began to nod gratified assent.

"I don't know much about hoss-trottin' rules, but a man that's been
in the show business for thirty years has got enough sportin' blood
in him for the job, I reckon. Bickford and Sproul, hey? Why, yes!
I'll hunt up the Cap, and take him over to Bickford's, and we'll
settle preliminaries, or whatever the hoss-talk is for gettin'
together. I'd rather referee a prize-fight, but you're too dead up
this way for real sport to take well. Nothing been said to Sproul?
All right! I'll fix him."

Cap'n Sproul was in his garden, surveying the growing "sass" with
much content of spirit. He cheerfully accepted Hiram's invitation
to take a ride, destination not mentioned, and they jogged away
toward "Bickburn Towers," as the Honorable J. Percival had named the
remodelled farm-house of his ancestors.

Hiram, whose gift was language, impetuous in flow and convincing in
argument, whether as barker or friend, conveyed the message of the
trustees to Cap'n Sproul. But the first selectman of Smyrna did not
display enthusiasm. He scowled at the buggy dasher and was silent.

"Men that have been out and about, like you and I have been, need
something once in a while to break the monotony of country life,"
concluded Hiram, slashing his whip at the wayside alders.

"You and me and him," observed the Cap'n, with sullen prod of his
thumb in direction of the "gingerbready" tower of the Bickford place
rising over the ridge, "marooned in that judges' stand like penguins
on a ledge--we'll be li'ble to break the monotony. Oh yes! There ain't
no doubt about that."

"Why, there'll be northin' to it!" blustered Hiram, encouragingly.
"I'll swear 'em into line, you holler 'Go!' and the Honer'ble
Bickford will finger that new gold stop-watch of his and see how fast
they do it. Northin' to it, I say!"

"This is the blastedest town a man ever settled down in to spend his
last days in peace and quietness," growled the Cap'n. "There's a set
of men here that seem to be perfickly happy so long as they're rollin'
up a gob of trouble, sloppin' a little sweet-oil and molasses on the
outside and foolin' some one into swallerin' it. I tell ye, Look,
I've lived here a little longer than you have, and when you see a
man comin' to offer you what they call an honor, kick him on general
principles, and kick him hard."

"Doctors ought to be willin' to take their own medicine," retorted
Hiram, grimly. "Here you be, first selec'man and--"

"They caught me when I wa'n't lookin'--not bein' used to the ways
of land-piruts," replied the Cap'n, gloomily. "I was tryin' to warn
you as one that's been ahead and knows."

"Why, that's just what I like about this town," blurted Hiram,
undismayed. "When I came home to Palermo a year ago or so, after all
my wanderin's, they wouldn't elect me so much as hog-reeve--seemed
to be down on me all 'round. But here--heard what they did last
night?" There was pride in his tones. "They elected me foreman of
the Smyrna Ancient and Honer'ble Firemen's Association."

"And you let 'em hornswoggle you into takin' it?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Leather buckets, piazzy hat, speakin'-trumpet, bed-wrench, and
puckerin'-string bag are in my front hall this minit," said Hiram,
cheerily, "and the wife is gittin' the stuff together for the feed
and blow-out next week. I'm goin' to do it up brown!"

The Cap'n opened his mouth as though to enter upon revelations. But
he shut it without a word.

"It ain't no use," he reflected, his mind bitter with the memories
of his own occupancy of that office. "It's like the smallpox and the
measles; you've got to have a run of 'em yourself before you're safe
from ketchin' 'em."

The Honorable J. Percival Bickford, rotund and suave with the
mushiness of the near-gentleman, met them graciously in the hall,
having waited for the servant to announce them.

Hiram did most of the talking, puffing at one of the host's long
cigars. Cap'n Sproul sat on the edge of a spider-legged chair, great
unhappiness on his countenance. Mr. Bickford was both charmed and
delighted, so he said, by their acceptance, and made it known that
he had suggested them, in his anxiety to have only gentlemen of
standing associated with him.

"As the landed proprietors of the town, as you might say," he observed,
"it becomes us as due our position to remove ourselves a little from
the herd. In the judges' stand we can, as you might say, be patrons
of the sports of the day, without loss of dignity. I believe--and
this is also my suggestion--that the trustees are to provide an open
barouche, and we will be escorted from the gate to the stand by a
band of music. That will be nice. And when it is over we will award
the prizes, as I believe they call it--"

"Announce winners of heats and division of purses," corrected Hiram,
out of his greater knowledge of sporting affairs. "I'll do that
through a megaphone. When I barked in front of my show you could hear
me a mile."

"It will all be very nice," said Mr. Bickford, daintily flecking
cigar ash from his glorious white waistcoat. "Er--by the way--I see
that you customarily wear a silk hat, Mr. Look."

"It needs a plug hat, a lemon, and a hunk of glass to run a circus,"
said the ex-showman.

"Yes, men may say what they like, Mr. Look, the people expect certain
things in the way of garb from those whom they honor with position.
Er--do you wear a silk hat officially, Captain Sproul, as selectman?"

"Not by a--never had one of the things on!" replied the Cap'n,
moderating his first indignant outburst.

"I'm going to do you a bit of neighborly kindness," said Mr. Bickford,
blandly. "James," he called to the servant, "bring the brown bandbox
in the hall closet. It's one of my hats," he explained. "I have
several. You may wear it in the stand, with my compliments, Captain
Sproul. Then we'll be three of a kind, eh? Ha, ha!"

The Cap'n licked his lips as though fever burned there, and worked
his Adam's apple vigorously. Probably if he had been in the
accustomed freedom of outdoors he would have sworn soulfully and
smashed the bandbox over the Honorable J. Percival's bald head. Now,
in the stilted confines of that ornate parlor, he nursed the bandbox
on his knees, as part of the rest of the spider-legged and frail
surroundings. When they retired to their team he carried the bandbox
held gingerly out in front of him, tiptoeing across the polished
floor.

"What? Me wear that bird-cage?" he roared, when they were out of
hearing. "Not by the great jeehookibus!"

"Yes, you will," returned Hiram, with the calm insistence of a friend.
"You ain't tryin' to make out that what I do ain't all right and proper,
are you?"

Cap'n Sproul checked an apparent impulse to toss the bandbox into
the roadside bushes, and after a moment tucked the thing under the
seat to have it out of the way of his tempted hands. Then he wrenched
off a huge chew of tobacco whose rumination might check his impulse
toward tempestuous language.

He tried the hat on that night in the presence of his admiring wife,
gritting curses under his breath, his skin prickling with resentment.
He swore then that he would never wear it. But on the day of the race
he carried it in its box to the selectman's office, at which common
meeting-place the three judges were to be taken up by the official
barouche of the Smyrna Fair Association.

Under the commanding eye of Hiram Look he put on the head-gear when
the barouche was announced at the door, and went forth into the glare
of publicity with a furtive sense of shame that flushed his cheek.
By splitting the top of his hack, Ferd Parrott, landlord of Smyrna
tavern, had produced a vehicle that somewhat resembled half a
watermelon. Ferd drove, adorned also with a plug hat from the stock
of the Honorable Percival.

Just inside the gate of the fair-grounds waited the Smyrna "Silver
Cornet Band." It struck up "Hail to the Chief," to the violent alarm
of the hack-horses.

"We're goin' to get run away with sure's you're above hatches!"
bellowed Cap'n Sproul, standing up and making ready to leap over the
edge of the watermelon. But Hiram Look restrained him, and the band,
its trombones splitting the atmosphere, led away with a merry march.

When they had circled the track, from the three-quarters pole to the
stand, and the crowd broke into plaudits, Cap'n Sproul felt a bit
more comfortable, and dared to straighten his neck and lift his
head-gear further into the sunshine.

He even forgot the hateful presence of his seat-mate, a huge dog that
Mr. Bickford had invited into the fourth place in the carriage.

"A very valuable animal, gentlemen," he said. "Intelligent as a man,
and my constant companion. To-day is the day of two of man's best
friends--the horse and the dog--and Hector will be in his element."

But Hector, wagging and slavering amiably about in the narrow
confines of the little stand to which they climbed, snapped the
Cap'n's leash of self-control ere five minutes passed.

"Say, Mr. Bickford," he growled, after one or two efforts to crowd
past the ubiquitous canine and get to the rail, "either me or your
dog is in the way here."

"Charge, Hector!" commanded Mr. Bickford, taking one eye from the
cheering multitude. The dog "clumped" down reluctantly.

"We might just as well get to an understandin'," said the Cap'n, not
yet placated. "I ain't used to a dog underfoot, I don't like a dog,
and I won't associate with a dog. Next thing I know I'll be makin'
a misstep onto him, and he'll have a hunk out of me."

"Why, my dear captain," oozed Hector's proprietor, "that dog is as
intelligent as a man, as mild as a kitten, and a very--"

"Don't care if he's writ a dictionary and nussed infants," cried the
Cap'n, slatting out his arm defiantly; "it's him or me, here; take
your choice!"

"I--I think your dog would be all right if you let him stay
down-stairs under the stand," ventured President Kitchen,
diplomatically.

"He's a valuable animal," demurred Mr. Bickford, "and--" He caught
the flaming eye of the Cap'n, and added: "But if you'll have a man
sit with him he may go.

"Now we'll settle down for a real nice afternoon," he went on,
conciliatingly. "Let's see: This here is the cord that I pull to
signal the horses to start, is it?"

"No, no!" expostulated President Kitchen, "you pull that bell-cord
to call them back if the field isn't bunched all right at the wire
when they score down for the word. If all the horses are in position
and are all leveled, you shout 'Go!' and start your watch."

"Precisely," said Mr. Bickford.

"It's the custom," went on the president, solicitous for the success
of his strange assortment of judges, yet with heart almost failing
him, "for each judge to have certain horses that he watches during
the mile for breaks or fouls. Then he places them as they come under
the wire. That is so one man won't have too much on his mind."

"Very, very nice!" murmured the Honorable J. Percival. "We are here
to enjoy the beautiful day and the music and the happy throngs, and
we don't want to be too much taken up with our duties." He pushed
himself well out into view over the rail, held his new gold watch
in one gloved hand, and tapped time to the band with the other.




XII


A narrow flight of rickety, dusty stairs conducted one from the dim,
lower region of the little stand through an opening in the floor of
the judge's aerie. There was a drop-door over the opening, held up
by a hasp.

Now came a thumping of resolute feet on the stairs; a head projected
just above the edge of the opening, and stopped there.

"President, trustees, and judges!" hailed a squeaky voice.

Cap'n Sproul recognized the speaker with an uncontrollable snort of
disgust.

It was Marengo Todd, most obnoxious of all that hateful crowd of the
Cap'n's "wife's relations"--the man who had misused the Cap'n's
honeymoon guilelessness in order to borrow money and sell him
spavined horses.

Marengo surveyed them gloomily from under a driving-cap visor huge
as a sugar-scoop. He flourished at them a grimy sheet of paper.

"Mister President, trustees, and judges, I've got here a dockyment
signed by seventeen--"

President Kitchen knew that Marengo Todd had been running his
bow-legs off all the forenoon securing signatures to a petition of
protest that had been inspired by Trustee Silas Wallace. The
president pushed away the hand that brandished the paper.

"What do you take this for--an afternoon readin'-circle?" he
demanded. "If you're goin' to start your hoss in this thirty-four
class you want to get harnessed. We're here to trot hosses, not to
peruse dockyments."

"This 'ere ain't no pome on spring," yelled Marengo, banging the dust
out of the floor with his whip-butt and courageously coming up one
step on the stairs. "It's a protest, signed by seventeen drivers,
and says if you start these events with them three old sofy pillers,
there, stuffed into plug hats, for judges, we'll take this thing
clear up to the Nayshunal 'Sociation and show up this fair management.
There, chaw on that!"

"Why, bless my soul!" chirruped the Honorable Bickford, "this man
seems very much excited. You'll have to run away, my good man! We're
very busy up here, and have no time to subscribe to any papers."

Mr. Bickford evidently believed that this was one of the daily
"touches" to which he had become accustomed.

"Don't ye talk to me like I was one of your salaried
spittoon-cleaners," squealed Marengo, emboldened by the hoarse and
encouraging whispers of Trustee Wallace in the dim depths below. The
name that much repetition by Wallace had made familiar slipped out
before he had time for second thought. "I knowed ye, Kittle-belly
Bickford, when ye wore patches on your pants bigger'n dinner-plates
and--"

President Kitchen let loose the hasp that held up the drop-door and
fairly "pegged" Mr. Todd out of sight. He grinned apologetically at
a furious Mr. Bickford.

"Order the marshal to call the hosses for the thirty-four trot,
Honer'ble," he directed, anxious to give the starter something to
do to take his mind off present matters.

Mr. Bickford obeyed, finding this exercise of authority a partial
sop to his wounded feelings.

Cap'n Sproul pendulumed dispiritedly to and fro in the little
enclosure, gloomily and obstinately waiting for the disaster that
his seaman's sense of impending trouble scented. Hiram Look was
frankly and joyously enjoying a scene that revived his old circus
memories.

Eleven starters finally appeared, mostly green horses. The drivers
were sullen and resentful. Marengo Todd was up behind a Gothic ruin
that he called "Maria M." When he jogged past the judges' stand to
get position, elbows on his knees and shoulders hunched up, the glare
that he levelled on Bickford from under his scoop visor was
absolutely demoniac. The mutter of his denunciation could be heard
above the yells of the fakers and the squawk of penny whistles.

Occasionally he scruffed his forearm over his head as though fondling
something that hurt him.

To start those eleven rank brutes on that cow-lane of a track would
have tested the resources and language of a professional. When they
swung at the foot of the stretch and came scoring for the first time
it was a mix-up that excited the vociferous derision of the crowd.
Nearly every horse was off his stride, the drivers sawing at the bits.

Marengo Todd had drawn the pole, but by delaying, in order to blast
the Honorable J. Percival with his glances, he was not down to turn
with the others, and now came pelting a dozen lengths behind, howling
like a Modoc.

Some railbird satirist near the wire bawled "Go!" as the unspeakable
riot swept past in dust-clouds. The Honorable Bickford had early
possessed himself of the bell-cord as his inalienable privilege. He
did not ring the bell to call the field back. He merely leaned far
out, clutching the cord, endeavoring to get his eye on the man who
had shouted "Go!" He declaimed above the uproar that the man who would
do such a thing as that was no gentleman, and declared that he should
certainly have a constable arrest the next man who interfered with
his duties.

In the mean time President Kitchen was frantically calling to him
to ring the gong. The horses kept going, for a driver takes no chances
of losing a heat by coming back to ask questions. It was different
in the case of Marengo Todd, driver of the pole-horse, and entitled
to "protection." He pulled "Maria M." to a snorting halt under the
wire and poured forth the vials of his artistic profanity in a way
that piqued Cap'n Sproul's professional interest, he having heard
more or less eminent efforts in his days of seafaring.

Lashed in this manner, the Honorable J. Percival Bickford began
retort of a nature that reminded his fellow-townsmen that he was
"Jabe" Bickford, of Smyrna, before he was donor of public benefits
and libraries.

The grimness of Cap'n Sproul's face relaxed a little. He forgot even
the incubus of the plug hat. He nudged Hiram.

"I didn't know he had it in him," he whispered. "I was afraid he was
jest a dude and northin' else."

In this instance the dog Hector seemed to know his master's voice,
and realized that something untoward was occurring. He came bounding
out from under the stand and frisked backward toward the centre of
the track in order to get a square look at his lord. In this blind
progress he bumped against the nervous legs of "Maria M." She
promptly expressed her opinion of the Bickford family and its
attaches by rattling the ribs of Hector by a swift

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