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,