THE SKIPPER AND THE SKIPPED (continued 4)

"It's the truth for me this time," cried Hiram, stoutly.

"Well, then, ditto and the same for me. But if it's comin' on to blow, we might as well get another anchor out. I'll start Constable Denslow 'round town to see what he can see. If he's sly enough and she's still here he prob'ly can locate her. And if he can scare her off, so much the better."

Constable Denslow, intrusted with only scant and vague information, began his search for a supposed escaped lunatic that day. Before nightfall he reported to the Cap'n that there were no strangers in town. However, right on the heels of that consoling information came again that terror who travelled by night! In the dusk of early evening another letter was left for Aaron Sproul, nor was the domicile of Hiram Look slighted by the mysterious correspondent.

Moved by common impulse the victims met in the path across the fields next morning.

"Another one of them bumbs dropped at my house last night!" stated Hiram, though the expression on his countenance had rendered that information superfluous.

"Ditto and the same," admitted the Cap'n. "Haven't brought yourn, have you?"

"Wife's holdin' onto it for evidence when she gets her bill of divorce," said Hiram.

"Ditto with me," affirmed Cap'n Sproul. "Tellin' mine the truth was what really started her mad up. It was just plain mystery up to that time, and she only felt sorry. When I told her the truth she said if it was that bad it would prob'ly turn out to be worse, and so long's I'd owned up to a part of it I'd better go ahead and tell the rest, and so on! And now she won't believe anything I try to tell her."

"Same over to my place," announced his despondent friend.

"It's your own cussed fault," blazed the Cap'n. "My notion was to lie to 'em. You can make a lie smooth and convincin'. The truth of this thing sounds fishy. It would sound fishy to me if I didn't know it was so."

"Since I got out of the circus business I've been tryin' to do business with less lyin', but it doesn't seem to work," mourned Hiram. "Maybe what's good for the circus business is good for all kinds. Seems to be that way! Well, when you'd told her the straight truth and had been as square as you could, what did you say to her when she flared up?"

"Northin'," answered the Cap'n. "Didn't seem to be northin' to say to fit the case."

"Not after the way they took the truth when it was offered to 'em," agreed Hiram. "I didn't say anything out loud. I said it to myself, and it would have broke up the party if a little bird had twittered it overhead at a Sunday-school picnic."

That day Jackson Denslow, pricked by a fee of ten dollars, made more searching investigation. It was almost a census. Absolutely no trace of such a stranger! Denslow sullenly said that such a domiciliary visit was stirring up a lot of talk, distrust, and suspicion, and, as he couldn't answer any questions as to who she was, where she came from, and what was wanted of her, nor hint as to who his employers were, it was currently stated that he had gone daffy over the detective business. His tone of voice indicated that he thought others were similarly afflicted. He allowed that no detective could detect until he had all the facts.

He demanded information and sneered when it was not given.

It was an unfortunate attitude to take toward men, the triggers of whose tempers had been cocked by such events as had beset Hiram Look and Aaron Sproul. Taking it that the constable was trying to pry into their business in order to regale the public on their misfortunes, Hiram threw a town-ledger at him, and the Cap'n kicked at him as he fled through the door of the office.

That night each was met at the front door by hysterics, and a third letter. The mystery was becoming eerie.

"Dang rabbit her miserable pelt!" growled Hiram at the despairing morning conference under the poplars. "She must be livin' in a hole round here, or else come in a balloon. I tell you, Cap'n Sproul, it's got to be stopped some way or the two families will be in the lunatic asylum inside of a week."

"Or more prob'ly in the divorce court. Louada Murilla vows and declares she'll get a bill if I don't tell her the truth, and when you've told the truth once and sworn to it, and it don't stick, what kind of a show is a lie goin' to stand, when a man ain't much of a liar?"

"If she's goin' to be caught we've got to catch her," insisted Hiram. "She's crazy, or else she wouldn't be watchin' for us to leave the house so as to grab in and toss one of them letters. Looks to me it's just revenge, and to make trouble. The darned fool can't marry both of us. I didn't sleep last night—not with that woman of mine settin' and boohooin'. I just set and thought. And the result of the thinkin' is that we'll take our valises to-day and march to the railroad-station in the face and eyes of everybody so that it will get spread round that we've gone. And we'll come back by team from some place down the line, and lay low either round your premises or mine and ketch that infernal, frowzle-headed sister of Jim the Penman by the hind leg and snap her blasted head off."

"What be you goin' to tell the wimmen?"

"Tell 'em northin'."

"There'll be the devil to pay. They'll think we're elopin'."

"Well, let 'em think," said Hiram, stubbornly. "They can't do any harder thinkin' than I've been thinkin', and they can't get a divorce in one night. When we ketch that woman we can preach a sermon to 'em with a text, and she'll be the text."

Cap'n Sproul sighed and went for his valise.

"What she said to me as I come away curled the leaves in the front yard," confided Hiram, as they walked together down the road.

"Ditto and the same," mourned the Cap'n.

At dusk that evening they dismounted from a Vienna livery-hitch on a back road in Smyrna, paid the driver and dismissed the team, and started briskly through the pastures across lots toward Hiram Look's farm.

An hour later, moving with the stealth of red Indians, they posted themselves behind the stone wall opposite the lane leading into the Look dooryard. They squatted there breathing stertorously, their eyes goggling into the night.

The Cap'n, with vision trained by vigils at sea, was the first to see the dim shape approaching. When she had come nearer they saw a tall feather nodding against the dim sky.

"Let's get her before she throws the letter—get her with the goods on her!" breathed Hiram, huskily. And when she was opposite they leaped the stone wall.

She had seasonable alarm, for several big stones rolled off the wall's top. And she turned and ran down the road with the two men pounding along fiercely in pursuit.

"My Gawd!" gasped Aaron, after a dozen rods; "talk about—gayzelles—she's—she's—"

He didn't finish the sentence, preferring to save his breath.

But skirts are an awkward encumbrance in a sprinting match. Hiram, with longer legs than the pudgy Cap'n, drew ahead and overhauled the fugitive foot by foot. And at sound of his footsteps behind her, and his hoarse grunt, "I've got ye!" she whirled and, before the amazed showman could protect himself, she struck out and knocked him flat on his back. But when she turned again to run she stepped on her skirt, staggered forward dizzily, and fell in a heap. The next instant the Cap'n tripped over Hiram, tumbled heavily, rolled over twice, and brought up against the prostrate fugitive, whom he clutched in a grasp there was no breaking.

"Don't let her hit ye," howled Hiram, struggling up. "She's got an arm like a mule's hind leg."

"And whiskers like a goat!" bawled the Cap'n, choking in utter astonishment. "Strike a match and let's see what kind of a blamenation catfish this is, anyhow."

And a moment later, the Cap'n's knees still on the writhing figure, they beheld, under the torn veil, by the glimmer of the match, the convulsed features of Batson Reeves, second selectman of the town of Smyrna.

"Well, marm," remarked Hiram, after a full thirty seconds of amazed survey, "you've sartinly picked out a starry night for a ramble."

Mr. Reeves seemed to have no language for reply except some shocking oaths.

"That ain't very lady-like talk," protested Look, lighting another match that he might gloat still further. "You ought to remember that you're in the presence of your two 'darlin's.' We can't love any one that cusses. You'll be smokin' a pipe or chawin' tobacker next." He chuckled, and then his voice grew hard. "Stop your wigglin', you blasted, livin' scarecrow, or I'll split your head with a rock, and this town will call it good reddance. Roll him over onto his face, Cap'n Sproul."

A generous strip of skirt, torn off by Reeves's boot, lay on the ground. Hiram seized it and bound the captive's arms behind his back. "Now let him up, Cap," he commanded, and the two men helped the unhappy selectman to his feet.

"So it's you, hey?" growled Hiram, facing him. "Because I've come here to this town and found a good woman and married her, and saved her from bein' fooled into marryin' a skunk like you, you've put up this job, hey? Because Cap'n Sproul has put you where you belong in town business, you're tryin' to do him, too, hey? What do you reckon we're goin' to do with you?"

It was evident that Mr. Reeves was not prepared to state. He maintained a stubborn silence.

Cap'n Sproul had picked up the hat with the tall feather and was gingerly revolving it in his hands.

"You're a nice widderer, you are!" snorted Hiram. "A man that will wear a deceased's clothes in order to help him break up families and spread sorrow and misery round a neighborhood, would be a second husband to make a woman both proud and pleased. Cap'n, put that hat and veil back onto him. I'll hold him."

Mr. Reeves consented to stand still only after he had received a half-dozen open-handed buffets that made his head ring.

"There!" ejaculated Hiram, after the Cap'n's unaccustomed fingers had arranged the head-gear. "Bein' that you're dressed for company, we'll make a few calls. Grab a-holt, Cap'n."

"I'll die in my tracks right here, first," squalled Reeves, guessing their purpose. But he was helpless in their united clutch. They rushed him up the lane, tramped along the piazza noisily, jostled through the front door, and presented him before Hiram's astounded wife.

"Mis' Look," said her husband, "here's the lady that's in love with me, and that has been leavin' me letters. It bein' the same lady that was once in love with you, I reckon you'll appreciate my feelin's in the matter. There's just one more clue that we need to clinch this thing—and that's another one of those letters. The Cap'n and I don't know how to find a pocket in a woman's dress. We're holdin' this lady. You hunt for the pocket, Mis' Look."

The amazement on her comely face changed to sudden and indignant enlightenment.

"The miserable scalawag!" she cried. The next instant, with one thrust of her hand, she had the damning evidence. There were two letters.

"She ain't delivered the one to darlin' Cap'n Sproul this evenin'," Hiram remarked, persisting still in his satiric use of the feminine pronoun. "If you'll put on your bonnet, Mis' Look, we'll all sa'nter acrost to the Cap'n's and see that Louada Murilla gets hers. Near's I can find out, the rules of this special post-office is that all love-letters to us pass through our wives' hands."

In the presence of Mrs. Sproul, after the excitement of the dramatic entrance had subsided, the unhappy captive attempted excuses, cringing pitifully.

"I didn't think of it all by myself," he bleated. "It was what the Dawn woman said, and then when I mentioned that I had some grudges agin' the same parties she wrote the notes, and the perfessor planned the rest, so't we could both get even. But it wasn't my notion. I reckon he mesmerized me into it. I ain't to blame. Them mesmerists has awful powers."

"Ya-a-a-as, that's probably just the way of it!" sneered Hiram, with blistering sarcasm. "But you'll be unmesmerized before we get done with you. There's nothin' like makin' a good job of your cure, seein' that you was unfort'nit' enough to get such a dose of it that it's lasted you a week. Grab him, Cap'n."

"What be ye goin' to do now?" quavered Reeves.

"Take you down into the village square, and, as foreman of the Ancient and Honer'ble Firemen's Association, I'll ring the bell and call out the department, stand you up in front of them all in your flounces fine, and tell 'em what you've been doin' to their chief. I guess all the heavy work of gettin' even with you will be taken off'm my hands after that."

Reeves groaned.

"As first selectman," broke in the Cap'n, "and interested in keepin' bad characters out of town, I shall suggest that they take and ride you into Vienny on a rail."

"With my fife and drum corps ahead," shouted Hiram, warming to the possibilities.

"I'll die here in my tracks first!" roared the captive.

"It's kind of apparent that Madame Dawn didn't give you lessons in prophesyin', along with the rest of her instruction," remarked Hiram. "That makes twice this evenin' that you've said you were goin' to die, and you're still lookin' healthy. Come along! Look happy, for you're goin' to be queen of the May, mother!"

But when they started to drag him from the room both women interposed.

"Hiram, dear," pleaded his wife, "please let the man go. Louada Murilla and I know now what a scalawag he is, and we know how we've misjudged both you and Cap'n Sproul, and we'll spend the rest of our lives showin' you that we're sorry. But let him go! If you make any such uproar as you're talkin' of it will all come out that he made your wives believe that you were bad men. It will shame us to death, Hiram. Please let him go."

"Please let him go, Aaron," urged Mrs. Sproul, with all the fervor of her feelings. "It will punish him worst if you drop him here and now, like a snake that you've picked up by mistake."

Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look stared at each other a long time, meditating. They went apart and mumbled in colloquy. Then the Cap'n trudged to his front door, opened it, and held it open. Hiram cut the strip that bound their captive's wrists.

The second selectman had not the courage to raise his eyes to meet the stares directed on him. With head bowed and the tall feather nodding over his face he slunk out into the night. And Hiram and the Cap'n called after him in jovial chorus:

"Good-night, marm!"

"This settling down in life seems to be more or less of a complicated performance," observed Cap'n Sproul when the four of them were alone, "but just at this minute I feel pretty well settled. I reckon I've impressed it on a few disturbers in this town that I'm the sort of a man that's better left alone. It looks to me like a long, calm spell of weather ahead."

XVII

Mr. Gammon's entrance into the office of the first selectman of Smyrna was unobtrusive. In fact, to employ a paradox, it was so unobtrusive as to be almost spectacular.

The door opened just about wide enough to admit a cat, were that cat sufficiently slab-sided, and Mr. Gammon slid his lath-like form in edgewise. He stood beside the door after he had shut it softly behind him. He gazed forlornly at Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman. Outside sounded a plaintive "Squawnk!"

Cap'n Sproul at that moment had his fist up ready to spack it down into his palm to add emphasis to some particularly violent observation he was just then making to Mr. Tate, highway "surveyor" in Tumble-dick District. Cap'n Sproul jerked his chin around over his shoulder so as to stare at Mr. Gammon, and held his fist poised in air.

"Squawnk!" repeated the plaintive voice outside.

Mr. Gammon had a head narrowed in the shape of an old-fashioned coffin, and the impression it produced was fully as doleful. His neighbors in that remote section of Smyrna known as "Purgatory," having the saving grace of humor, called him "Cheerful Charles."

The glare in the Cap'n's eyes failed to dislodge him, and the Cap'n's mind was just then too intent on a certain topic to admit even the digression of ordering Mr. Gammon out.

"What in the name of Josephus Priest do I care what the public demands?" he continued, shoving his face toward the lowering countenance of Mr. Tate. "I've built our end of the road to the town-line accordin' to the line of survey that's best for this town, and now if Vienny ain't got a mind to finish their road to strike the end of our'n, then let the both of 'em yaw apart and end in the sheep-pastur'. The public ain't runnin' this. It's me—the first selectman. You are takin' orders from me—and you want to understand it. Don't you nor any one else move a shovelful of dirt till I tell you to."

Hiram Look, retired showman and steady loafer in the selectman's office, rolled his long cigar across his lips and grunted indorsement.

"Squawnk!" The appeal outside was a bit more insistent.

Mr. Gammon sighed. Hiram glanced his way and noted that he had a noose of clothes-line tied so tightly about his neck that his flabby dewlap was pinched. He carried the rest of the line in a coil on his arm.

"Public says—" Mr. Tate began to growl.

"Well, what does public say?"

"Public that has to go around six miles by crossro'ds to git into Vienny says that you wa'n't elected to be no crowned head nor no Seizer of Rooshy!" Mr. Tate, stung by memories of the taunts flung at him as surveyor, grew angry in his turn. "I live out there, and I have to take the brunt of it. They think you and that old fool of a Vienny selectman that's lettin' a personal row ball up the bus'ness of two towns are both bedeviled."

"She's prob'ly got it over them, too," enigmatically observed Mr. Gammon, in a voice as hollow as wind in a knot-hole.

This time the outside "Squawnk" was so imperious that Mr. Gammon opened the door. In waddled the one who had been demanding admittance.

"It's my tame garnder," said Mr. Gammon, apologetically. "He was lonesome to be left outside."

A fuzzy little cur that had been sitting between Mr. Tate's earth-stained boots ran at the gander and yapped shrilly. The big bird curved his neck, bristled his feathers, and hissed.

"Kick 'em out of here!" snapped the Cap'n, indignantly.

"Any man that's soft-headed enough to have a gander followin' him round everywhere he goes ought to have a guardeen appointed," suggested Mr. Tate, acidulously, after he had recovered his dog and had cuffed his ears.

"My garnder is a gent side of any low-lived dog that ever gnawed carrion," retorted Mr. Gammon, his funereal gloom lifting to show one flash of resentment.

"Look here!" sputtered the Cap'n, "this ain't any Nat'ral History Convention. Shut up, I tell ye, the two of you! Now, Tate, you can up killick and set sail for home. I've given you your course, and don't you let her off one point. You tell the public of this town, and you can stand on the town-line and holler it acrost into Vienny, that the end of that road stays right there."

Mr. Tate, his dog under his arm, paused at the door to fling over his shoulder another muttered taunt about "bedevilment," and disappeared.

"Now, old button on a graveyard gate, what do you want?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, running eye of great disfavor over Mr. Gammon and his faithful attendant. He had heard various reports concerning this widower recluse of Purgatory, and was prepared to dislike him.

"I reckoned she'd prob'ly have it over you, too," said Mr. Gammon, drearily. "It's like her to aim for shinin' marks."

Cap'n Sproul blinked at him, and then turned dubious gaze on Hiram, who leaned back against the whitewashed wall, nesting his head comfortably in his locked fingers.

"If she's bedeviled me and bedeviled you, there ain't no tellin' where she'll stop," Mr. Gammon went on. "And you bein' more of a shinin' mark, it will be worse for you."

"Look here," said the first selectman, squaring his elbows on the table and scowling on "Cheerful Charles," "if you've come to me to get papers to commit you to the insane horsepittle, you've proved your case. You needn't say another word. If it's any other business, get it out of you, and then go off and take a swim with your old web-foot—there!"

Mr. Gammon concealed any emotion that the slur provoked. He came along to the table and tucked a paper under the Cap'n's nose.

"There's what Squire Alcander Reeves wrote off for me, and told me to hand it to you. He said it would show you your duty."

The selectman stared up at Mr. Gammon when he uttered the hateful name of Reeves. Mr. Gammon twisted the noose on his neck so that the knot would come under his ear, and endured the stare with equanimity.

With spectacles settled on a nose that wrinkled irefully, the Cap'n perused the paper, his eyes growing bigger. Then he looked at the blank back of the sheet, stared wildly at Mr. Gammon, and whirled to face his friend Look.

"Hiram," he blurted, "you listen to this: 'Pers'nally appeared before me this fifteenth day of September Charles Gammon, of Smyrna, and deposes and declares that by divers arts, charms, spells, and magic, incantations, and evil hocus-pocus, one—one—'"

"Arizima," prompted Mr. Gammon, mournfully. The Cap'n gazed on him balefully, and resumed:

"'One Arizima Orff has bewitched and bedeviled him, his cattle, his chattels, his belongings, including one calf, one churn, and various ox-chains. It is therefore the opinion of the court that the first selectman of Smyrna, as chief municipal officer, should investigate this case under the law made and provided for the detection of witches, and for that purpose I have put this writing in the hands of Mr. Gammon that he may summon the proper authority, same being first selectman aforesaid.'"

"That is just how he said it to me," confirmed "Cheerful Charles." "He said that it was a thing for the selectman to take hold of without a minute's delay. I wish you'd get your hat and start for my place now and forthwith."

Cap'n Sproul paid no attention to the request. He was searching the face of Hiram with eyes in which the light was growing lurid.

"I'm goin' over to his office and hosswhip him, and I want you to come along and see me do it." He crumpled the paper into a ball, threw it into a corner, and stumped to the window.

"It's just as I reckoned," he raged. "He was lookin' out to see how the joke worked. I see him dodge back. He's behind the curtain in his office." Again he whirled on Hiram. "After what the Reeves family has tried to do to us," he declared, with a flourish of his arm designed to call up in Mr. Look's soul all the sour memories of things past, "he's takin' his life in his hands when he starts in to make fun of me with a lunatic and a witch-story."

Mr. Gammon had recovered the dishonored document, and was smoothing it on the table.

"That's twice you've called me a lunatic," he remonstrated. "You call me that again, and you'll settle for slander! Now, I've come here with an order from the court, and your duty is laid before you. When a town officer has sworn to do his duty and don't do it, a citizen can make it hot for him." Mr. Gammon, his bony hands caressing his legal document, was no longer apologetic. "Be you goin' to do your duty—yes or no?"

"If—if—you ain't a—say, what have you got that rope around your neck for?" demanded the first selectman.

"To show to the people that if I ain't protected from persecution and relieved of my misery by them that's in duty bound to do the same, I'll go out and hang myself—and the blame will then be placed where it ought to be placed," declared Mr. Gammon, shaking a gaunt finger at the Cap'n.

As a man of hard common sense the Cap'n wanted to pounce on the paper, tear it up, announce his practical ideas on the witchcraft question, and then kick Mr. Gammon and his gander into the middle of the street. But as town officer he gazed at the end of that monitory finger and took second thought.

And as he pondered, Hiram Look broke in with a word.

"I know it looks suspicious, comin' from a Reeves," said he, "but I hardly see anything about it to start your temper so, Cap."

"Why, he might just as well have sent me a writin' to go out and take a census of the hossflies between here and the Vienny town-line," sputtered the first selectman; "or catch the moskeeters in Snell's bog and paint 'em red, white, and blue. I tell you, it's a dirty, sneakin', underhand way of gettin' me laughed at."

"I ain't a humorous man myself, and there ain't no—" began Mr. Gammon.

"Shut up!" bellowed the Cap'n. "It was only last week, Hiram, that that old gob of cat-meat over there that calls himself a lawyer said I'd taken this job of selectman as a license to stick my nose into everybody's business in town. Now, here he is, rigging me out with a balloon-jib and stays'ls"—he pointed a quivering finger at the paper that Mr. Gammon was nursing—"and sendin' me off on a tack that will pile me up on Fool Rocks. Everybody can say it of me, then—that I'm stickin' my nose in. Because there ain't any witches, and never was any witches."

"Ain't witches?" squealed Mr. Gammon. "Why, you—"

But Hiram checked the outburst with flapping palm.

"Here!" he cried. "The two of you wait just a minute. Keep right still until I come back. Don't say a word to each other. It will only be wasting breath."

He went out, and they heard him clumping up the stairs into the upper part of the town house.

He came back with several books in the hook of his arm and found the two mute and not amiable. He surveyed them patronizingly, after he had placed the books on the table.

"Gents, once when I was considerably younger and consequently reckoned that I knew about all there was to know, not only all the main points, but all the foot-notes, I didn't allow anybody else to know anything. And I used to lose more or less money betting that this and that wasn't so. Then up would come the fellow with the cyclopedy and his facts and his figgers. At last I was so sure of one thing that I bet a thousand on it, and a fellow hit me over the head with every cyclopedy printed since the time Noah waited for the mud to dry. I got my lesson! After that I took my tip from the men that have spent time findin' out. I'm more or less of a fool now, but before that I was such a fool that I didn't know that I didn't know enough to know that I didn't know."

"What did you bet on?" inquired the Cap'n, with a gleam of interest.

"None of your business!" snapped Hiram, a red flush on his cheek. "But if I'd paid more attention to geography in my school than I did to tamin' toads and playin' circus I wouldn't have bet."

He opened one of the books that he had secured in his trip to the town library.

"Now, you say offhand, Cap, that there never was such a thing as a witch. Well, right here are the figgers to show that between 1482 and 1784 more than three hundred thousand wimmen were put to death in Europe for bein' witches. There's the facts under 'Witches' in your own town cyclopedy."

Cap'n Sproul did not appear to be convinced.

"There it is, down in black and white," persisted Hiram. "Now, how about there never bein' any witches?" He tapped his finger on the open page.

"If the book says that, witches must be extinker than dodos. Your cyclopedy don't say anything about any of 'em gettin' away and comin' over to this country, does it?"

"Of course we've had 'em in this country," said Hiram, opening another book. "Caught 'em by the dozen in Salem! Cotton Mather made a business of it. You don't think a man like Cotton Mather is lettin' himself be fooled on the witch question, do you? Here's the book he wrote. A man that's as pious as Cotton Mather ain't makin' up lies and writin' 'em down, and puttin' himself on record."

"There's just as many witches to-day as there ever was," cried the corroborative Mr. Gammon. "The trouble is they ain't hunted out and brought to book for their infernal actions. There's hundreds and hundreds of folks goin' through this life pestered all the time with trouble that's made for 'em by a witch, and they don't know what's the matter with 'em. But they can't fool me. I know witches when I see 'em. And when she turns herself into a cat and—"

"Does what?" demanded the Cap'n, testily.

"Why, it wa'n't more'n three nights ago that I heard her yowlin' away in my barn chamber, and there she was, turned into a cat most as big as a ca'f, and I throwed an iron kittle at her and she come right through the bottom of it like it was a paper hoop. There, now! What have you got to say to that?"

"That you are about as handy a liar as I ever had stand up in front of me," returned the Cap'n, with animation. He whirled on Hiram and gesticulated at the books. "Do you mean to tell me that you're standin' in with him on any such jing-bedoozled, blame' foolishness as this? I took you to be man-grown."

"It's always easy enough to r'ar up in this world and blart that things ain't so," snapped Hiram, with some heat. "Fools do that thing right along. I don't want you to be that kind. Live and learn."

"Witches or no witches, cyclopedy or no cyclopedy, what I want to know is, do you want to have it passed round this community that the two of us set here—men that have been round this world as much as we have—and heard a man tell a cat-and-kittle story like that, and lapped it down? They'll be here sellin' us counterfeit money and gold bricks next."

Hiram blinked a little doubtfully at Mr. Gammon, and his rope and gander, and probably, under ordinary circumstances, would have flouted that gentleman. But the authority of the encyclopedia gave his naturally disputatious nature a stimulus not to be resisted. Beating the page with the back of his hand, he assembled his proof that there had been witches, that there are witches, and that there will be more witches in the future. And he wound up by declaring that Mr. Gammon probably knew what he was talking about—a statement that Mr. Gammon indorsed with a spirited tale of how his ox-chains had been turned into mighty serpents in his dooryard, and had thrashed around there all night to his unutterable distress and alarm. Again he demanded investigation of his case, and protection by the authorities.

In this appeal he was backed by Hiram, who volunteered his assistance in making the investigation. And in the end, Cap'n Sproul, as first selectman of Smyrna, consented to visit the scene of alleged enchantment in "Purgatory," though as private citizen he criticised profanely the state of mind that allowed him to go on such an errand. He gnawed his beard, and a flush of something like shame settled on his cheek. It seemed to him that he was allowing himself to be cajoled into a mild spree of lunacy.

"And there bein' no time like the present, and my horse bein' hitched out there in the shed," advised Hiram, briskly, "why not go now? Did you ride out from your place or walk?" he inquired of "Cheerful Charles."

"Walked," replied Mr. Gammon, dejectedly. "My hoss is bewitched, too. Can't get him out of the stable."

"We'll take you along with us," was Hiram's kindly proffer.

"Him and that gander?" protested the Cap'n.

"I can set in behind with the garnder under my arm," urged Mr. Gammon, meekly.

The Cap'n came around the table and angrily twitched the rope off Mr. Gammon's neck. That much concession to the convenances he demanded with a vigor that his doleful constituent did not gainsay.

When they drove away the baleful eye of the first selectman spied Squire Alcander Reeves furtively regarding them through the dingy glass of his office window.

"Me off witch-chasin' and him standin' there grinnin' at it like a jezeboo!" he gritted. And he surveyed, with no very gracious regard, his companions in this unspeakable quest.

When they were well out of the village Mr. Gammon twisted his neck and sought to impart more information over the back of the seat.

"I tell you, she's a cooler when it comes to bedevilin'. She had an old Leghorn hen that a mink killed just after the hen had brought out a brood of chickens. And what do you s'pose she done? Why, she went right to work and put a cluck onto the cat, and the cat has brooded 'em ever since."

The Cap'n emitted a snort of disgust.

"And here we are, two sensible men, ridin' around over this town an' tryin' to make head and tail out of such guff as that! Do you pretend to tell me for one minute, Hiram Look, that you take any kind of stock in this sort of thing? Now, just forget that cyclopedy business and your ancient history for a few minutes and be honest. Own up that you were arguin' to hear yourself talk, and that you're dragging me out here to pass away the time."

Hiram scratched his nose and admitted that now the Cap'n had asked for friendly candor, he really didn't take much stock in witches.

"There! I knew it!" cried the selectman, with unction and relief. "And now that you've had your joke and done with it, let's dump out old coffin-mug and his gander and turn round and go back about our business."

But Hiram promptly whipped along.

"Oh, thunder!" he ejaculated. "While we're about it, we might as well see it through. My curiosity is sort of stirred up."

The Cap'n was angry in good earnest again.

"Curiosity!" he snarled. "Now you've named it. I wouldn't own up to bein' such a pickid-nosed old maid as that, not for a thousand dollars!"

Hiram was wholly unruffled.

"How do you suppose any one ever knew enough to write a cyclopedy," said he, "if they didn't go investigate and find out? They went official, just as we are goin' now."

Hiram seemed to take much content in that phase of the situation, feeling that mere personal inquisitiveness was dignified in this case under the aegis of law and authority. It was exactly this view of the matter that most disturbed Cap'n Aaron Sproul, for that hateful Pharisee, Squire Reeves, had supplied the law to compel his own authority as selectman.

He sat with elbows on his knees, gloomily surveying a dim reflection of himself in the dasher of Hiram's wagon. In pondering on the trammels of responsibility the sour thought occurred to him, as it had many times in the past year, that commanding a town was a different proposition from being ruler of the Jefferson P. Benn on the high seas—with the odds in favor of the Benn.

XVIII

The Cap'n had never visited that retired part of the town called "Purgatory." He found Mr. Gammon's homestead to be a gray and unkempt farm-house from which the weather had scrubbed the paint. The front yard was bare of every vestige of grass and contained a clutter that seemed to embrace everything namable, including a gravestone.

"What be ye gettin' ready for—an auction?" growled the Cap'n, groutily, his seaman's sense of tidiness offended. "Who do you expect will bid in a second-hand gravestone?"

"It ain't second-hand," replied the owner, reprovingly, as he eased himself out of the wagon. "Mis' Gammon, my first wife, is buried there. 'Twas by her request. She made her own layin'-out clothes, picked her bearers and music, and selected the casket. She was a capable woman."

"It's most a wonder to me that he ever took the crape off'm the door-knob," remarked Hiram, in a husky aside to the Cap'n, not intending to be overheard and somewhat crestfallen to find that he had been.

"I didn't for some time, till it got faded," explained Mr. Gammon, without display of resentment. "I had the casket-plate mounted on black velvet and framed. It's in the settin'-room. I'll show it to you before you leave."

Hiram pulled his mouth to one side and hissed under shelter of his big mustache: "Well, just what a witch would want of that feller, unless 'twas to make cracked ice of him, blame me if I know!"

Mr. Gammon began apprehensive survey of his domains.

"Let's go home," muttered the Cap'n, his one idea of retreat still with him. "What do you and I know about witches, anyway, even if there are such things? We've done our duty! We've been here. If he gets us to investigatin' it will be just like him to want us to dig that woman up."

His appeal was suddenly interrupted. Mr. Gammon, peering about his premises for fresh evidences of witchcraft accomplished during his absence, bellowed frantic request to "Come, see!" He was behind the barn, and they hastened thither.

"My Gawd, gents, they've witched the ca'f!" Their eyes followed the direction of his quivering finger.

A calf was placidly surveying them from among the branches of a "Sopsy-vine" apple-tree, munching an apple that he had been able to reach. Whatever agency had boosted him there had left him wedged into the crotch of the limbs so that he could not move, though he appeared to be comfortable.

"It jest takes all the buckram out of me—them sights do," wailed Mr. Gammon. "I can't climb up there and do it. One of you will have to." He pulled out a big jackknife, opened it with his yellow teeth, and extended it.

"Have to do what?" demanded Hiram.

"Cut off his ears and tail. That's the only way to get him out from under the charm."

But Hiram, squinting up to assure himself that the calf was comfortable, pushed Mr. Gammon back and made him sit down on a pile of bean-poles.

"Better put your hat between your knees," he suggested, noting the way Mr. Gammon's thin knees were jigging. "You might knock a sliver off the bones, rappin' them together that way."

He lighted one of his long cigars, his shrewd eyes searching Mr. Gammon all the time.

"Now," said he, tipping down a battered wheelbarrow and sitting on it, "there's nothin' like gettin' down to cases. We're here official. The first selectman of this town is here. Go ahead, Cap'n Sproul, and put your questions."

"Ask 'em yourself," snorted the Cap'n, with just a flicker of resentful malice; "you're the witch expert. I ain't."

"Well," retorted Hiram, with an alacrity that showed considerable zest for the business in hand, "I never shirked duty. First, what's her name again—the woman that's doin' it all?"

"I want you to come and see—" began Mr. Gammon, apparently having his own ideas as to a witch-hunt, but Hiram shook the big cigar at him fiercely.

"We ain't got time nor inclination for inspectin' coffin-plates, wax-flowers, bewitched iron kittles, balky horses, and old ganders. Who is this woman and where does she live, and what's the matter with her?"

"She's Arizima Orff, and that's her house over the rise of that land where you can see the chimblys." Mr. Gammon was perfunctory in that reply, but immediately his little blue eyes began to sparkle and he launched out into his troubles. "There's them that don't believe in witches. I know that! And they slur me and slander me. I know it. I don't get no sympathy. I—"

"Shut up!" commanded the chief of the inquisition.

"They say I'm crazy. But I know better. Here I am with rheumaticks! Don't you s'pose I know where I got 'em? It was by standin' out all het up where she had hitched me after she'd rid' me to one of the witch conventions. She—"

"Say, you look here!" roared the old showman; "you stay on earth. Don't you try to fly and take us with you. There's the principal trouble in gettin' at facts," he explained, whirling on the Cap'n. "Investigators don't get down to cases. Talk with a stutterer, and if you don't look sharp you'll get to stutterin' yourself. Now, if we don't look out, Gammon here will have us believin' in witches before we've investigated."

"You been sayin' right along that you did believe in 'em," grunted the first selectman.

"Northin' of the sort!" declared Hiram. "I was only showin' you that when you rose up and hollered that there never was any witches you didn't know what you were talkin' about."

While Cap'n Sproul was still blinking at him, trying to comprehend the exact status of Hiram's belief, that forceful inquisitor, who had been holding his victim in check with upraised and admonitory digit, resumed:

"Old maid or widder?"

"Widder."

"Did deceased leave her that farm, title clear, and well-fixed financially?"

"Yes," acknowledged Mr. Gammon.

"Now," Hiram leaned forward and wagged that authoritative finger directly under the other's case-knife nose, "what was it she done to you to make you get up this witch-story business about her? Here! Hold on!" he shouted, detecting further inclination on the part of Mr. Gammon to rail about his bedevilment. "You talk good Yankee common sense! Down to cases! What started this? You can't fool me, not for a minute! I've been round the world too much. I know every fake from a Patagonian cockatoo up to and including the ghost of Bill Beeswax. She done something to you. Now, what was it?"

Mr. Gammon was cowed. He fingered his dewlap and closed and unclosed his lips.

"Out with it!" insisted Hiram. "If you don't, me and the selectman will have you sued for slander."

"Up to a week ago," confessed Mr. Gammon, gazing away from the blazing eyes of Hiram into the placid orbs of the calf in the tree, "we was goin' to git married. Farms adjoined. She knowed me and I knowed her. I've been solemn since Mis' Gammon died, but I've been gittin' over it. We was goin' to jine farms and I was goin' to live over to her place, because it wouldn't be so pleasant here with Mis' Gammon—"

He hesitated, and ducked despondent head in the direction of the front yard.

"Well, seconds don't usually want to set in the front parlor window and read firsts' epitaphs for amusement," remarked Hiram, grimly. "What then?"

"Well, then all at once she wouldn't let me into the house, and she shooed me off'm her front steps like she would a yaller cat, and when I tried to find out about it that young Haskell feller that she's hired to do her chores come over here and told me that he wasn't goin' to stay there much longer, 'cause she had turned witch, and had put a cluck onto the cat when the old hen—"

"'Tend to cases! 'Tend to cases!" broke in Hiram, impatiently.

"And about that time the things began to act out round my place, and the Haskell boy told me that she was braggin' how she had me bewitched."

"And you believed that kind of infernal tomrot?" inquired the showman, wrathfully. Somewhat to the Cap'n's astonishment, Hiram seemed to be taking only a sane and normal view of the thing.

"I did, after I went over and taxed her with it, and she stood off and pointed her shotgun at me and said that yes, she was a witch, and if I didn't get away and keep away she would turn me into a caterpillar and kill me with a fly-spanker. There! When a woman says that about herself, what be ye goin' to do—tell her she's a liar, or be a gent and believe her?" Mr. Gammon was bridling a little.

Hiram looked at "Cheerful Charles" and jerked his head around and stared at the Cap'n as though hoping for some suggestion. But the selectman merely shook his head with a pregnant expression of "I told you so!"

Hiram got up and stamped around the tree to cover what was evidently momentary embarrassment. All at once he kicked at something in the grass, bent over and peered at it, looked up at the calf, then picked up the object on the ground and stuffed it deep into his trousers pocket.

"You said that chore feller's name was Haskell, hey?" he demanded, returning and standing over Mr. Gammon.

"Simmy Haskell," said the other.

"Well, now, what have you done to him?"

"Nothin'—never—no, sir—never nothin'!" insisted Mr. Gammon, with such utter conviction that Hiram forebore to question further. He whirled on his heel and started away toward the chimney that poked above the rise of land.

"Come along!" he called, gruffly, over his shoulder, and the two followed.

It was a trim little place that was revealed to them. A woman in a sunbonnet was on her knees near some plants in the cozy front yard, and a youth was wheeling apples up out of the orchard.

The youth set down his barrow and surveyed them with some curiosity as they came up to him, Hiram well ahead, looming with all his six feet two, his plug-hat flashing in the sun. Hiram did not pause to palter with the youth. He grabbed him by the back of the neck with one huge hand, and with the other tapped against the Haskell boy's nose the object he had picked up from the grass.

"Next time you put a man's calf up a tree look out that you don't drop your knife in the wrassle."

"'Tain't my knife!" gasped the accused.

"Lie to me, will ye? Lie to me—a man that's associated with liars all my life? Not your knife, when your name is scratched on the handle? And don't you know that two officers stood right over behind the stone wall and saw you do it? Because you wasn't caught in your cat-yowlin' round and your ox-chain foolishness and your other didoes, do you think you can fool a detective like me? You come along to State Prison! I was intendin' to let you off if you owned up and told all you know—but now that you've lied to me, come along to State Prison!"

There was such vengefulness and authority in the big man's visage that the Haskell boy wilted in unconditional surrender.

"He got me into the scrape. I'll tell on him. I don't want to go to State Prison," he wailed, and then confession flowed from him with the steady gurgle of water from a jug. "He come to me, and he says, says he, 'He won't ever be no kind of a boss for you. If he marries her you'll get fed on bannock and salt pork. He's sourer'n bonny-clabber and meaner'n pig-swill. Like enough he won't keep help, anyway, and will let everything go to rack and ruin, the same as he has on his own place. I'm the one to stick to,' says he. 'I've got a way planned, and all I need is your help and we'll stand together,' he says, 'and here's ten dollars in advance.' And I took it and done what he planned. I needed the money, and I done it. He says to me that we'll do things to him to make him act crazy, and we'll tell her that he's dangerous, and then you can tell him, says he, that she's turned witch, and is doin' them things to him; ''cause a man that has got his first wife buried in front of his doorstep is fool enough to believe most anything,' says he."

"Well," remarked Hiram, after a long breath, "this 'sezzer,' whoever he may be, when he got to sezzin', seems to have made up his mind that there was one grand, sweet song of love in this locality that was goin' to be sung by a steam-calliope, and wind up with boiler bustin'."

"Why in devilnation don't you ask him who 'twas that engineered it?" demanded Cap'n Sproul, his eyes blazing with curiosity.

"An official investigation," declared Hiram, with a relish he could not conceal, as he returned the Cap'n's earlier taunt upon that gentleman himself, "is not an old maids' quiltin'-bee, where they throw out the main point as soon's they get their hoods off, and then spend the rest of the afternoon talkin' it over. Things has to take their right and proper course in an official investigation. I'm the official investigator."

He turned on Mr. Gammon.

"What do you think now, old hearse-hoss? Have you heard enough to let you in on this? Or do you want to be proved out as the original old Mister Easymark, in a full, illustrated edition, bound in calf? So fur's I'm concerned, I've heard enough on that line to make me sick."

This amazing demolishment of his superstition left Mr. Gammon gasping. Only one pillar of that mental structure was standing. He grabbed at it.

"I didn't believe she was the witch till she told me so herself," he stammered. "She never lied to me. I believed what she told me with her own mouth."

The Haskell boy, still in the clutch of Hiram, evidently believed that the kind of confession that was good for the soul was full confession.

"I told her that the time you was dangerousest was when any one disputed with you about not havin' the witches. I told her that if you ever said anything she'd better join in and agree with you, and humor you, 'cause that's the only way to git along with crazy folks."

For the first time in many years color showed in the drab cheeks of the melancholy Mr. Gammon. Two vivid red spots showed that, after all, it was blood, not water, that flowed in his veins.

"Dod lather you to a fritter, you little freckle-faced, snub-nosed son of seco!" he yelped, shrilly. "I've been a mild and peaceable man all my life, but I'm a good mind to—I'm a good mind to—" He searched his meek soul for enormities of retribution, and declared: "I'm a good mind to skin you, hide, pelt, and hair. I'll cuff your ears up to a pick, any way!" But Hiram pushed him away when he advanced.

"There! That's the way to talk up, Gammon," he said, encouragingly. "You are showin' improvement. Keep on that way and you'll get to be quite a man. I was afraid you wasn't anything but a rusty marker for a graveyard lot. If you don't keep your back up some in this world, you're apt to get your front knocked in. But I can't let you lick the boy! This investigation is strictly official and according to the law, and he's turned State's evidence. It's the other critter that you want to be gettin' your muscle up for—the feller that was tryin' to get the widder and the property away from you. All the other evidence now bein' in, you may tell the court, my son, who was that 'sezzer.' You sha'n't be hurt!"

"It was Mister Batson Reeves, the second selectman," blurted the youth.

There are moments in life when language fails, when words are vain; when even a whisper would take the edge from a situation. Such a moment seemed that one when Hiram Look and Cap'n Sproul gazed at each other after the Haskell boy had uttered that name.

After a time Hiram turned, seized the boy by the scruff of his coat, and dragged him up to the front-yard fence, where the widow was gazing at them with increasing curiosity.

"Haskell boy," commanded Hiram, "tell her—tell her straight, and do it quick."

And when the confession, which went more glibly the second time, was concluded, the investigator gave the culprit a toss in the direction of the Gammon farm, and shouted after him: "Go get that calf down out of that apple-tree, and set down with him and trace out your family relationship. You'll probably find you're first cousins."

Mrs. Orff had sunk down weakly on a bed of asters, and was staring from face to face.

"Marm," said Hiram, taking off his plug hat and advancing close to the fence, "Cap'n Sproul and myself don't make it our business to pry into private affairs, or to go around this town saving decent wimmen from Batson Reeves. But we seem to have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line. You listen to me! Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time. What do you think of a man of that stamp?"

"I didn't really like him as well—as well as—" quavered the widow, her eyes on the appealing orbs of Mr. Gammon; "but I was told I was in danger, and he wanted to be my protector."

"Protector!" sneered Hiram. "Since he's been a widderer he's been tryin' to court and marry every woman in the town of Smyrna that's got a farm and property. We know it. We can prove it. All he wants is money! You've just escaped by luck, chance, and the skin of your teeth from a cuss that northin' is too low for him to lay his hand to. What do you think of a man that, in order to make trouble and disgrace for his neighbors, will dress up in his dead wife's clothes and snoop around back doors and write anonymous letters to confidin' wimmen?"

"My Lawd!" gasped the widow.

"We caught him at it! So, as I say, you've escaped from a hyena. Now, Mr. Gammon only needs a wife like you to get him out of the dumps."

Mr. Gammon wiped tears from his cheeks and gazed down on her.

"Charles," she said, gently, "won't you come into the house for a few minits? I want to talk to you!"

But as Mr. Gammon was about to obey joyously, Hiram seized his arm.

"Just a moment," he objected. "We'll send him right in to you, marm, but we've got just a little matter of business to talk over with him."

And when they were behind the barn he took Mr. Gammon by his coat-collar with the air of a friend.

"Gammon," said he, "what are you goin' to do to him? Me and the Cap'n are interested. He'll be comin' here this evenin'. He'll be comin' to court. Now, what are you goin' to do?"

There was an expression on Mr. Gammon's face that no one had ever seen there before. His eyes were narrowed. His pointed tongue licked his lips. His thin hair bristled.

"What are you goin' to do to him?"

"Lick him!" replied Mr. Gammon. It was laconic, but it sounded like a rat-tail file on steel.

"You can do it!" said Hiram, cheerfully. "The Cap'n and I both have done it, and it's no trouble at all. I was in hopes you'd say that!"

"Lick him till his tongue hangs out!" said Mr. Gammon, with bitterer venom.

"That will be a good place to lay for him; right down there by the alders," suggested the Cap'n, pointing his finger.

"Yes, sir, lick him till his own brother won't know him." And Mr. Gammon clicked together his bony fists, as hard as flints.

"And that's another point!" said Hiram, hastily. "You've seen to-day that I'm a pretty shrewd chap to guess. I've been round the world enough to put two and two together. Makin' man my study is how I've got my property. Now, Gammon, you've got that writin' by Squire Alcander Reeves. When you said 'brother' it reminded me of what I've been ponderin'. Bat Reeves has been making the Widder Orff matter a still hunt. His brother wasn't on. When you went to the squire to complain, squire saw a chance to get the Cap'n into a law scrape—slander, trespass, malicious mischief—something! Them lawyers are ready for anything!"

"Reg'lar sharks!" snapped the selectman.

"Now," continued Hiram, "after you've got Bat Reeves licked to an extent that will satisfy inquirin' friends and all parties interested, you hand that writin' to him! It will show him that his blasted fool of a lawyer brother, by tryin' to feather his own nest, has lost him the widder and her property, got him his lickin', and put him into a hole gen'rally. Tell him that if it hadn't been for that paper drivin' us out here northin' would have been known."

Hiram put up his nose and drew in a long breath of prophetic satisfaction.

"And if I'm any judge of what 'll be the state of Bat Reeves's feelin's in general when he gets back to the village, the Reeves family will finish up by lickin' each other—and when they make a lawsuit out of that it will be worth while wastin' a few hours in court to listen to. How do you figger it, Cap'n?"

"It's a stem-windin', self-actin' proposition that's wound up, and is now tickin' smooth and reg'lar," said the Cap'n, with deep conviction. "They'll both get it!"

And they did.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Hiram Look shook hands on the news before nine o'clock the next morning.

XIX

Mr. Loammi Crowther plodded up the road. Mr. Eleazar Bodge stumped down the road.

They arrived at the gate of Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of Smyrna, simultaneously.

Bathed in the benignancy of bland Indian summer, Cap'n Sproul and his friend Hiram Look surveyed these arrivals from the porch of the Sproul house.

At the gate, with some apprehensiveness, Mr. Bodge gave Mr. Crowther precedence. As usual when returning from the deep woods, Mr. Crowther was bringing a trophy. This time it was a three-legged lynx, which sullenly squatted on its haunches and allowed itself to be dragged through the dust by a rope tied into its collar.

"You needn't be the least mite afeard of that bobcat," protested Mr. Crowther, cheerily; "he's a perfick pet, and wouldn't hurt the infant in its cradle."

The cat rolled back its lips and snarled. Mr. Bodge retreated as nimbly as a man with a peg-leg could be expected to move.

"I got him out of a trap and cured his leg, and he's turrible grateful," continued Mr. Crowther.

But Mr. Bodge trembled even to his mat of red beard as he backed away.

"Him and me has got so's we're good friends, and I call him Robert—Bob for short," explained the captor, wistfully.

"You call him off—that's what you call him," shouted Mr. Bodge. "I hain't had one leg chawed off by a mowin'-machine to let a cust hyeny chaw off the other. Git out of that gateway. I've got business here with these gents."

"So've I," returned Mr. Crowther, meekly; and he went in, dragging his friend.

"I done your arrunt," he announced to the Cap'n. "I cruised them timberlands from Dan to Beersheby, and I'm ready to state facts and figgers."

"Go ahead and state," commanded the Cap'n.

"I reckon it better be in private," advised the other, his pale-blue eyes resting dubiously on Hiram.

"I ain't got no secrets from him," said the Cap'n, smartly. "Break cargo!"

"You'll wish you heard it in private," persisted Mr. Crowther, with deep meaning. "It ain't northin' you'll be proud of."

"I'll run along, I guess!" broke in the old showman. "It may be something—"

"It ain't," snapped the Cap'n. "It's only about them timberlands that my wife owned with her brother, Colonel Gideon Ward. Estate wasn't divided when the old man Ward died, and since we've been married I've had power of attorney from my wife to represent her." His jaw-muscles ridged under his gray beard, and his eyes narrowed in angry reminiscence.

"We've had two annual settlements, me and her brother. First time 'twas a free fight—next time 'twas a riot—third time, well, if there had been a third time I'd have killed him. So I saved myself from State Prison by dividin' accordin' to the map, and then I sent Crowther up to look the property over. There ain't no secret. You sit down, Hiram."

"Considerin' the man, I should think you'd have done your lookin' over before you divided," suggested the showman. He scented doleful possibilities in Mr. Crowther's mien.

"If I'd done business with him fifteen minutes longer by the clock I'd have been in prison now for murder—and it would have been a bloody murder at that," blurted the Cap'n. "It had to be over and done with short and sharp. He took half. I took half. Passed papers. He got away just before I lost control of myself. Narrowest escape I ever had. All I know about the part I've got is that it's well wooded and well watered."

"It is," agreed Mr. Crowther, despondently. "It's the part where the big reservoir dam flows back for most twenty miles. You can sail all over it in a bo't, and cut toothpicks from the tops of the second-growth birch. He collected all the flowage damages. He's lumbered the rest of your half till there ain't northin' there but hoop poles and battens. All the standin' timber wuth anything is on his half. I wouldn't swap a brimstun' dump in Tophet for your half."

"How in the devil did you ever let yourself get trimmed that way?" demanded Hiram. "It's all right for ten-year-old boys to swap jack-knives, sight unseen, but how a man grown would do a thing like you done I don't understand."

"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, gloomily. "I reckon about all I was thinkin' of was lettin' him get away before I had blood on my hands. I'm afraid of my own self sometimes. And it's bad in the family when you kill a brother-in-law. I took half. He took half. Bein' a sailorman, I reckoned that land was land, acre for acre."

"The only man I ever heard of as bein' done wuss," continued Mr. Crowther, "was a city feller that bought a quarter section of township 'Leven for a game-preserve, and found when he got up there that it was made up of Misery Bog and the south slope of Squaw Mountain, a ledge, and juniper bushes. The only game that could stay there was swamp-swogons, witherlicks, and doodywhackits."

"What's them?" inquired the Cap'n, as though he hoped that he might at least have these tenants on his worthless acres.

"Woods names for things that there ain't none of," vouchsafed Mr. Crowther. "You owe me for twenty-two days' work, nine shillin's a day, amountin' to—"

"Here! Take that and shut up!" barked the Cap'n, shoving bills at him. Then he wagged a stubby finger under Mr. Crowther's nose. "Now you mark well what I say to you! This thing stays right here among us. If I hear of one yip comin' from you about the way I've been done, I'll come round to your place and chop you into mince-meat and feed you to that animile there!"

"Oh, I'm ashamed enough for you so that I won't ever open my mouth," cried Mr. Crowther. He went out through the gate, dragging his sulky captive.

"And you needn't worry about me, neither," affirmed Mr. Bodge, who had been standing unnoted in the shadow of the woodbine.

"Of course," he continued, "I ain't got so thick with either of you gents as some others has in this place, never likin' to push myself in where I ain't wanted. But I know you are both gents and willin' to use them right that uses you right."

It was not exactly a veiled threat, but it was a hint that checked certain remarks that the Cap'n was about to address to the eavesdropper.

Mr. Bodge took advantage of the truce, and seated himself on the edge of the porch, his peg-leg sticking straight out in forlorn nakedness.

"Investments is resky things in these days, Cap'n Sproul. Gold-mines—why, you can't see through 'em, nor the ones that run 'em. And mark what has been done to you when you invested in the forest primeval! I knowed I was comin' here at just the right time. I've got a wonderful power for knowin' them things. So I came. I'm here. You need a good investment to square yourself for a poor one. Here it is!" He pulled off his dented derby and patted his bald head.

"Skatin'-rink?" inquired the Cap'n, sarcastically.

"Brains!" boomed Mr. Bodge, solemnly. "But in these days brains have to be backed with capital. I've tried to fight it out, gents, on my own hook. I said to myself right along, 'Brains has got to win in the end, Bodge. Keep on!' But have they? No! Five hundred partunts, gents, locked up in the brains of Eleazar Bodge! Strugglin' to get out! And capital pooled against me! Ignoramuses foolin' the world with makeshifts because they've got capital behind 'em to boost them and keep others down—and Bodge with five hundred partunts right here waitin'." Again he patted the shiny sphere shoved above the riot of hair and whiskers.

The Cap'n scrutinized the surface with sullen interest.

"They'd better stay inside, whatever they are you're talkin' about," he growled. "They couldn't pick up no kind of a livin' on the outside."

"Gents, do you know what's the most solemn sound in all nature?" Mr. Bodge went on. "I heard it as I came away from my house. It was my woman with the flour-barrel ended up and poundin' on the bottom with the rollin'-pin to get out enough for the last batch of biscuit. The long roll beside the graves of departed heroes ain't so sad as that sound. I see my oldest boy in the dooryard with the toes of his boots yawed open like sculpins' mouths. My daughter has outgrown her dress till she has to wear two sets of wristers to keep her arms warm—and she looks like dressed poultry. And as for me, I don't dare to set down enough to get real rested, because my pants are so thin I'm afraid I can't coax 'em along through next winter. I've come to the place, gents, where I've give up. I can't fight the trusts any longer without some backin'. I've got to have somebody take holt of me and get what's in me out. I reelize it now. It's in me. Once out it will make me and all them round me rich like a—a—"

When Mr. Bodge halted for a simile Hiram grunted under his breath: "Like a compost heap."

"I was born the way I am—with something about me that the common run of men don't have. How is it my brains gallop when other brains creep? It's that mysterious force in me. Seein' is believin'. Proof is better than talkin'. Cap'n Sproul, you just take hold of one of my whiskers and yank it out. Take any one, so long's it's a good lengthy one."

His tone was that of a sleight-of-hand man offering a pack of cards for a draw.

The Cap'n obeyed after Mr. Bodge had repeated his request several times, shoving his mat of beard out invitingly.

Mr. Bodge took the whisker from the Cap'n's hand, pinched its butt firmly between thumb and forefinger and elevated it in front of his face. It stuck straight up. Then it began to bend until its tip almost touched his lips. A moment thus and it bent in the other direction.

"There!" cried Mr. Bodge, triumphantly. "Thomas A. Edison himself couldn't do that with one of his whiskers."

"You're right," returned Hiram, gravely. "He'd have to borrow one."

"A man that didn't understand electricity and the forces of nature, and that real brains of a genius are a regular dynamo, might think that I done that with my breath. But there is a strange power about me. All it needs is capital to develop it. You've got the capital, you gents. This ain't any far-away investment. It's right here at home. I'm all business when it comes to business." He stuck up a grimy finger. "You've got to concede the mysterious power because you've seen it for yourselves. Now you come over to my house with me and I'll show you a few inventions that I've been able to put into shape in spite of the damnable combination of the trusts."

He slid off the porch and started away, beckoning them after him with the battered derby.

"I've heard 'em buzz in my time, too," sneered Hiram, pushing back his plug hat, "but that hummin' is about the busiest yet. He could hold a lighted taller candle in his hand and jump off'm a roof and think he was a comet."

But the Cap'n did not seem to be disposed to echo this scorn.

"This here I've got may be only a notion, and it prob'ly is," he said, knotting his gray brows, "and it don't seem sensible. First sight of him you wouldn't think he could be used. But when I laid eyes on old Dot-and-carry-one there, and when he grabbed into this thing the way he did just as I was thinkin' hard of what Colonel Gid Ward has done to me, it came over me that I was goin' to find a use for him."

"How?" persisted the utilitarian Hiram.

"Don't have the least idea," confessed the Cap'n. "It's like pickin' up a stockin' full of wet mud and walkin' along hopin' that you'll meet the man you want to swat with it. I'm goin' to pick him up."

He stumped off the piazza and followed Mr. Bodge. And Hiram, stopping to relight his cigar, went along, too, reflecting that when a man has plenty of time on his hands he can afford to spend a little of it on the gratification of curiosity.

The first exhibits in the domain of Bodge were not cheering or suggestive of value. For instance, from among the litter in a tumble-down shop Mr. Bodge produced something in the shape of a five-pointed star that he called his "Anti-stagger Shoe."

"I saw old Ike Bradley go past here with a hard-cider jag that looped over till its aidges dragged on the ground," he explained. "I tied cross-pieces onto his feet and he went along all level. Now see how a quick mind like mine acts? Here's the anti-stagger shoe. To be kept in all city clubs and et cetry. Let like umbrellas. Five places in each shoe for a man to shove his foot. Can't miss it. Then he starts off braced front, sides, and behind."

Hiram sniffed and the Cap'n was pensive, his thoughts apparently active, but not concerned in any way with the "Anti-stagger Shoe."

The "Patent Cat Identifier and Introducer," exhibited in actual operation in the Bodge home, attracted more favorable attention from inspecting capital. Mr. Bodge explained that this device allowed a hard-working man to sleep after he once got into bed, and saved his wife from running around nights in her bare feet and getting cold and incurring disease and doctors' bills. It was an admitted fact in natural history, he stated, that the uneasy feline is either yowling to be let out or meowing on the window-sill to be let in. With quiet pride the inventor pointed to a panel in the door, hinged at the top. This permitted egress, but not ingress.

"An ordinary, cheap inventor would have had the panel swing both ways," said Mr. Bodge, "and he would have a kitchen full of strange cats, with a skunk or two throwed in for luck. You see that I've hinged a pane of winder-glass and hitched it to a bevelled stick that tips inward. Cat gets up on the sill outside and meows. Dog runs to the winder and stands up to see, and puts his paws on the stick because it's his nature for to do so. Pane tips in. If it's our cat, dog don't stop her comin' in. If it's a strange cat—br-r-r, wow-wow! Off she goes!"

Mr. Bodge noted with satisfaction the gleam of interest in capital's eyes.

"You can reckon that at least a million families in this country own cats—and the nature of cats and dogs can be depended on to be the same," said Mr. Bodge. "It's a self-actin' proposition, this identifier and introducer; that means fortunes for all concerned just as soon as capital gets behind it. And I've got five hundred bigger partunts wrasslin' around in my head."

But Cap'n Sproul continued to be absorbed in thought, as though the solution of a problem still eluded him.

"But if capital takes holt of me," proceeded Mr. Bodge, "I want capital to have the full layout. There ain't goin' to be no reserves, the same as there is with most of these cheatin' corporations these days. You come with me."

They followed him into a scraggly orchard, and he broke a crotched limb from a tree. With a "leg" of this twig clutched firmly in either hand he stumped about on the sward until the crotch suddenly turned downward.

"There's runnin' water there," announced the wizard, stabbing the soil with his peg-leg. "I can locate a well anywhere, any place. When I use willer for a wand it will twist in my hands till the bark peels off. You see, I'm full of it—whatever it is. I showed you that much with the whisker. I started in easy with you. It makes me dizzy sometimes to foller myself. I have to be careful and let out a link at a time, or I'd take folks right off'm their feet. Now you come with me and keep cool—or as cool as you can, because I'm goin' to tell you something that will give you sort of a mind-colic if you ain't careful how you take it in."

He pegged ahead of them, led the way around behind a barn that was skeow-wowed in the last stages of dilapidation, and faced them with excitement vibrating his streaming whiskers.

"This, now," he declared, "is just as though I took you into a national bank, throwed open the safe door, and said: 'Gents, help yourselves!'"

He drew a curious object out of the breast pocket of his faded jumper. It was the tip of a cow's horn securely plugged. Into this plug were inserted two strips of whalebone, and these he grasped, as he had clutched the "legs" of the apple-tree wand.

"One of you lay some gold and silver down on the ground," he requested. "I'd do it, but I ain't got a cent in my pocket."

Hiram obeyed, his expression plainly showing his curiosity.

When Mr. Bodge advanced and stood astride over the money, the cow's horn turned downward and the whalebone strips twisted.

"It's a divinin'-rod to find buried treasure," said Mr. Bodge; "and it's the only one in the world like it, because I made it myself, and I wouldn't tell an angel the secret of the stuff I've plugged in there. You see for yourself what it will do when it comes near gold or silver."

Hiram turned a cold stare on his wistful eagerness.

"I don't know what you've got in there, nor why it acts that way," said the showman, "but from what I know about money, the most of it's well taken care of by the men that own it; and just what good it's goin' to do to play pointer-dog with that thing there, and go round and flush loose change and savin's-banks, is more than I can figger."

Mr. Bodge merely smiled a mysterious and superior smile.

"Cap'n Sproul," said he, "in your seafarin' days didn't you used to hear the sailormen sing this?" and he piped in weak falsetto:

"Oh, I've been a ghost on Cod Lead Nubble, Sence I died—sence I died. I buried of it deep with a lot of trouble, And the chist it was in was locked up double, And I'm a-watchin' of it still on Cod Lead Nubble, Sence I died—sence I died."

"It's the old Cap Kidd song," admitted the Cap'n, a gleam of new interest in his eyes.

"As a seafarin' man you know that there was a Cap'n Kidd, don't you?"

Cap'n Sproul wagged nod of assent.

"He sailed and he sailed, and he robbed, and he buried his treasure, ain't that so?"

"I believe that's the idea," said the Cap'n, conservatively.

"And it's still buried, because it ain't been dug up, or else we'd have heard of it. Years ago I read all that hist'ry ever had to say about it. I said then to myself, 'Bodge,' says I, 'if the treasure of old Cap Kidd is ever found, it will be you with your wonderful powers that will find it!' I always said that to myself. I know it now. Here's the tool." He shook the cow's horn under the Cap'n's nose.

"Why ain't you been down and dug it up?" asked Hiram, with cold practicality.

"Diggin' old Cap Kidd's treasure ain't like digging a mess of potaters for dinner, Mr. Look. The song says 'Cod Lead Nubble.' Old Cap Kidd composed that song, and he put in the wrong place just to throw folks off'm the track. But if I had capital behind me I'd hire a schooner and sail round them islands down there, one after the other; and with that power that's in me I could tell the right island the minute I got near it. Then set me ashore and see how quick this divinin'-rod would put me over that chist! But it's buried deep. It's goin' to take muscle and grit to dig it up. But the right crew can do it—and that's where capital comes in. Capital ain't ever tackled it right, and that's why capital ain't got hold of that treasure."

"I reckon I'll be movin' along," remarked Hiram, with resentment bristling the horns of his mustache; "it's the first time I ever had a man pick me out as a candidate for a gold brick, and the feelin' ain't a pleasant one."

But the Cap'n grasped his arm with detaining grip.

"This thing is openin' up. It ain't all clear, but it's openin'. I had instink that I could use him. But I couldn't figger it. It ain't all straightened out in my mind yet. But when you said 'gold brick' it seemed to be clearer."

Hiram blinked inquiringly at his enigmatic friend.

"It was what I was thinkin' of—gold brick," the Cap'n went on. "I thought that prob'ly you knew some stylish and reliable gold-bricker—havin' met same when you was travellin' round in the show business."

Replying to Mr. Look's indignant snort Cap'n Sproul hastened to say: "Oh, I don't mean that you had any gold-bricker friends, but that you knew one I could hire. Probably, though, you don't know of any. Most like you don't. I realize that the gold-bricker idea ain't the one to use. There's the trouble in findin' a reliable one. And even when the feller got afoul of him, the chances are the old land-pirut would steal the brick. This here"—jabbing thumb at Mr. Bodge—"is fresher bait. I believe the old shark will gobble it if he's fished for right. What's your idea?"

"Well, generally speakin'," drawled Hiram, sarcastically, "it is that you've got softenin' of the brain. I can't make head or tail out of anything that you're sayin'."

Cap'n Sproul waked suddenly from the reverie in which he had been talking as much to himself as to Hiram.

"Say, look here, you can understand this, can't you, that I've been done out of good property—buncoed by a jeeroosly old hunk of hornbeam?"

"Oh, I got bulletins on that, all right," assented Hiram.

"Well, from what you know of me, do you think I'm the kind of a man that's goin' to squat like a hen in a dust-heap and not do him? Law? To Tophet with your law! Pneumony, lightnin', and lawyers—they're the same thing spelled different. I'm just goin' to do him, that's all, and instink is whisperin' how." He turned his back on the showman and ran calculating eye over Mr. Bodge.

"I don't hardly see how that old hair mattress there is goin' to be rung in on the deal," growled Hiram.

"Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, frankly; "not so fur as the details appear to me just now. But there's something about him that gives me hopes." He pulled out his wallet, licked his thumb, and peeled off a bill.

"Bodge, so fur's I can see now, you seem to be a good investment. I don't know just yet how much it is goin' to take to capitalize you, but here's ten dollars for an option. You understand now that I'm president of you, and my friend here is sekertary. And you're to keep your mouth shut."

Mr. Bodge agreed with effusive gratitude, and capital went its way. The inventor chased after them with thumping peg-leg to inquire whether he should first perfect the model of the "cat identifier," or develop his idea of an automatic chore-doer, started by the rooster tripping a trigger as he descended to take his matutinal sniff of air.

"You just keep in practise with that thing," commanded the Cap'n, pointing to the cow's horn.

"I don't see even yet how you are goin' to do it," remarked Hiram, as they separated a half-hour later at Cap'n Sproul's gate.

"Nor I," said the Cap'n; "but a lot of meditation and a little prayer will do wonders in this world, especially when you're mad enough."

XX

The night seemed to afford counsel, for the next day Cap'n Sproul walked into the dooryard of Colonel Gideon Ward with features composed to an almost startling expression of amiability. The Colonel, haunted by memories and stung by a guilty conscience, appeared at the door, and his mien indicated that he was prepared for instant and desperate combat.

At the end of a half-hour's discourse, wholly by the Cap'n, his face had lost a measure of its belligerency, but sullen fear had taken its place. For Cap'n Sproul's theme had been the need of peace and mutual confidence in families, forbearance and forgetfulness of injuries that had been mutual. The Cap'n explained that almost always property troubles were the root of family evils, and that as soon as property disputes were eliminated in his case, he at once had come to a realizing sense of his own mistakes and unfair attitude, and had come to make frank and manly confession, and to shake hands. Would the Colonel shake hands?

The Colonel shook hands apprehensively, bending back and ready to duck a blow. Would the Colonel consent to mutual forgiveness, and to dwell thereafter in bonds of brotherly affection? The Colonel had only voiceless stammerings for reply, which the Cap'n translated to his own satisfaction, and went away, casting the radiance of that startling amiability over his shoulder as he departed. Colonel Ward stared after the pudgy figure as long as it remained in sight, muttering his boding thoughts.

It required daily visits for a week to make satisfactory impress on the Colonel's mistrustful fears, but the Cap'n was patient. In the end, Colonel Ward, having carefully viewed this astonishing conversion from all points, accepted the amity as proof of the guileless nature of a simple seaman, and on his own part reciprocated with warmth—laying up treasures of friendship against that possible day of discovery and wrath that his guilty conscience suggested.

If Colonel Ward, striving to reciprocate, had not been so anxious to please Cap'n Sproul in all his vagaries he would have barked derisive laughter at the mere suggestion of the Captain Kidd treasure, to the subject of which the simple seaman aforesaid led by easy stages. The Colonel admitted that Mr. Bodge had located a well for him by use of a witch-hazel rod, but allowed that the buried-treasure proposition was too stiff batter for him to swallow. He did come at last to accept Cap'n Sproul's dictum that there was once a Captain Kidd, and that he had buried vast wealth somewhere—for Cap'n Sproul as a sailorman seemed to be entitled to the possession of authority on that subject. But beyond that point there was reservation that didn't fit with Cap'n Sproul's calculations.

"Blast his old pork rind!" confided the Cap'n to Hiram. "I can circle him round and round the pen easy enough, but when I try to head him through the gate, he just sets back and blinks them hog eyes at me and grunts. To get near him at all I had to act simple, and I reckon I've overdone it. Now he thinks I don't know enough to know that old Bodge is mostly whiskers and guesses. He's known Bodge longer'n I have, and Bodge don't seem to be right bait. I can't get into his wallet by first plan."

"It wasn't no kind of a plan, anyway," said Hiram, bluntly. "It wouldn't be stickin' him good and plenty enough to have Bodge unloaded onto him, just Bodge and northin' else done. 'Twasn't complicated enough."

"I ain't no good on complicated plots," mourned Cap'n Sproul.

"You see," insisted Hiram, "you don't understand dealin' with jay nature the same as I do. Takes the circus business to post you on jays. Once in a while they'll bite a bare hook, but not often. Jays don't get hungry till they see sure things. Your plain word of old Cap Kidd and buried treasure sounds good, and that's all. In the shell-game the best operator lets the edge of the shell rest on the pea carelesslike, as though he didn't notice it, and then joggles it down over as if by accident; and, honest, the jay hates to take the money, it looks so easy! In the candy-game there's nothing doin' until the jay thinks he catches you puttin' a twenty-dollar bill into the package. Then look troubled, and try to stop him from buyin' that package! You ain't done anything to show your brother-in-law that Bodge ain't a blank."

The Cap'n turned discouraged gaze on his friend. "I've got to give it up," he complained. "I ain't crook enough. He's done me, and I'll have to stay done."

Hiram tapped the ashes from his cigar, musingly surveyed his diamond ring, and at last said: "I ain't a butter-in. But any time you get ready to holler for advice from friends, just holler."

"I holler," said the Cap'n, dispiritedly.

"Holler heard by friends," snapped Hiram, briskly. "Friends all ready with results of considerable meditation. You go right over and tell your esteemed relative that you're organizin' an expedition to discover Cap Kidd's treasure, and invite him to go along as member of your family, free gratis for nothin', all bills paid, and much obleeged to him for pleasant company."

"Me pay the bills?" demanded the Cap'n.

"Money advanced for development work on Bodge, that's all! To be taken care of when Bodge is watered ready for sale. Have thorough understandin' with esteemed relative that no shares in Bodge are for sale. Esteemed relative to be told that any attempt on the trip to buy into Bodge will be considered fightin' talk. Bodge and all results from Bodge are yours, and you need him along—esteemed relative—to see that you have a square deal. That removes suspicion, and teases at the same time."

"Will he go?" asked Cap'n Sproul, anxiously.

"He will," declared Hiram, with conviction. "A free trip combined with a chance of perhaps doin' over again such an easy thing as you seem to be won't ever be turned down by Colonel Gideon Ward."

At nine o'clock that evening Cap'n Sproul knocked at Hiram Look's front door and stumped in eagerly. "He'll go!" he reported. "Now let me in on full details of plan."

"Details of plan will be handed to you from time to time as you need 'em in your business," said Hiram, firmly. "I don't dare to load you. Your trigger acts too quick."

"For a man that is handlin' Bodge, and is payin' all the bills, I don't seem to have much to do with this thing," grunted the Cap'n, sullenly.

"I'll give you something to do. To-morrow you go round town and hire half a dozen men—say, Jackson Denslow, Zeburee Nute, Brad Wade, Seth Swanton, Ferd Parrott, and Ludelphus Murray. Be sure they're all members of the Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association."

"Hire 'em for what?"

"Treasure-huntin' crew. I'll go with you. I'm their foreman, and I can make them keep their mouths shut. I'll show you later why we'll need just those kind of men."

The Cap'n took these orders with dogged resignation.

"Next day you'll start with Bodge and charter a packet in Portland for a pleasure cruise—you needin' a sniff of salt air after bein' cooped up on shore for so long. Report when ready, and I'll come along with men and esteemed relative."

"It sounds almighty complicated for a plot," said the Cap'n. In his heart he resented Hiram's masterfulness and his secretiveness.

"This ain't no timber-land deal," retorted Hiram, smartly, and with cutting sarcasm. "You may know how to sail a ship and lick Portygee sailors, but there's some things that you can afford to take advice in."

On the second day Cap'n Sproul departed unobtrusively from Smyrna, with the radiant Mr. Bodge in a new suit of ready-made clothes as his seat-mate in the train.

Smyrna perked up and goggled its astonishment when Hiram Look shipped his pet elephant, Imogene, by freight in a cattle-car, and followed by next train accompanied by various tight-mouthed members of the Smyrna fire department and Colonel Gideon Ward.

Cap'n Sproul had the topmast schooner Aurilla P. Dobson handily docked at Commercial Wharf, and received his crew and brother-in-law with cordiality that changed to lowering gloom when Hiram followed ten minutes later towing the placid Imogene, and followed by a wondering concourse of men and boys whom his triumphal parade through the streets from the freight-station had attracted. With a nimbleness acquired in years of touring the elephant came on board.

Cap'n Sproul gazed for a time on this unwieldy passenger, surveying the arrival of various drays laden with tackle, shovels, mysterious boxes, and baled hay, and then took Hiram aside, deep discontent wrinkling his forehead.

"I know pretty well why you wanted Gid Ward along on the trip. I've got sort of a dim idea why you invited the Hecly fire department; and perhaps you know what we're goin' to do with all that dunnage on them trucks. But what in the devil you're goin' to do with that cust-fired old elephant—and she advertisin' this thing to the four corners of God's creation—well, it's got my top-riggin' snarled."

"Sooner you get your crew to work loadin', sooner you'll get away from sassy questions," replied Hiram, serenely, wagging his head at the intrusive crowd massing along the dock's edge. And the Cap'n, impressed by the logic of the advice, and stung by the manner in which Hiram had emphasized "sassy questions," pulled the peak of his cap over his eyes, and became for once more in his life the autocrat of the quarter-deck.

An hour later the packet was sluggishly butting waves with her blunt bows in the lower harbor, Cap'n Sproul hanging to the weather-worn wheel, and roaring perfectly awful profanity at the clumsy attempts of his makeshift crew.

"I've gone to sea with most everything in the line of cat-meat on two legs," he snarled to Hiram, who leaned against the rail puffing at a long cigar with deep content, "but I'll be billy-hooed if I ever saw six men before who pulled on the wrong rope every time, and pulled the wrong way on every wrong rope. You take them and—and that elephant," he added, grimly returning to that point of dispute, "and we've got an outfit that I'm ashamed to have the Atlantic Ocean see me in company with."

"Don't let that elephant fuss you up," said Hiram, complacently regarding Imogene couched in the waist.

"But there ain't northin' sensible you can do with her."

Hiram cocked his cigar pertly.

"A remark, Cap'n Sproul, that shows you need a general manager with foresight like me. When you get to hoistin' dirt in buckets she'll be worth a hundred dollars an hour, and beat any steam-winch ever operated."

Again the Cap'n felt resentment boil sourly within him. This doling of plans and plot to him seemed to be a reflection on his intelligence.

"Reckon it's buried deep, do you?" inquired Colonel Ward, a flavor of satiric skepticism in his voice. He was gazing quizzically forward to where Mr. Bodge sat on the capstan's drumhead, his nose elevated with wistful eagerness, his whiskers flapping about his ears, his eyes straight ahead.

"It's buried deep," said Hiram, with conviction. "It's buried deep, because there's a lot of it, and it was worth while to bury it deep. A man like Cap Kidd wa'n't scoopin' out a ten-foot hole and buryin' a million dollars and goin' off and leavin' it to be pulled like a pa'snip by the first comer."

"A million dollars!" echoed the Colonel.

"Northin' less! History says it. There was a lot of money flyin' around the world in them days, and Cap Kidd knew how to get holt of it. The trouble is with people, Colonel, they forget that there was a lot of gold in the world before the 'Forty-niners' got busy."