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.