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was to give a nightly entertainment at the hall, consisting of hypnotism and psychic readings, the latter by "that astounding occult seer and prophetess, Madame Dawn." Cap'n Sproul went home growling strong language, but confessing to himself that he was a little ashamed to enter into any further contest with the cigarette-smoking showman and the two men who were the Cap'n's hated associates on the board of selectmen. That evening neighbor Hiram Look called with Mrs. Look on their way to the village to attend the show, but Cap'n Sproul doggedly resisted their appeals that he take his wife and go along, too. He opposed no objection, however, when Louada Murilla decided that she would accept neighbor Look's offer of escort. But when she came back and looked at him, and sighed, and sighed, and looked at him till bedtime, shaking her head sadly when he demanded the reason for her pensiveness, he wished he had made her stay at home. He decided that Zeburee Nute had probably been busy with his tongue as to that boyish display of temper on the Rattledown Hill road. Hiram Look came over early the next morning and found the Cap'n thinning beets in his garden. The expression on the visitor's face did not harmonize with the brightness of the sunshine. "I don't blame you for not goin'," he growled. "But if you had an idea of what they was goin' to do to get even, I should 'a' most thought you'd 'a' tipped me off. It would have been the part of a friend, anyway." The Cap'n blinked up at him in mute query. "It ain't ever safe to sass people that's got the ear of the public, like reporters and show people," proceeded Hiram, rebukingly. "I've been in the show business, and I know. They can do you, and do you plenty, and you don't stand the show of an isuckle in a hot spider." "What are ye tryin' to get through you, anyway?" demanded the first selectman. "Hain't your wife said northin' about it?" "She's set and looked at me like I was a cake that she'd forgot in the oven," confided the Cap'n, sullenly; "but that's all I know about it." "Well, that's about what I've had to stand in my fam'ly, too. I tell ye, ye hadn't ought to have sassed that mesmerist feller. Oh, I heard all about it," he cried, flapping hand of protest as the Cap'n tried to speak. "I don't know why you done it. What I say is, you ought to have consulted me. I know show people better'n you do. Then you ain't heard northin' of what she said?"
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