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
offi