--and
I've got the dose."

"I should hate at my age to have to start in and go to sea again,"
mourned the Cap'n, after long meditation; "but I reckon I'll either
have to do that or go up in a balloon and stay there. There's too
many tricks for me on land. They ring in all they can think of
themselves, and then they go to work and get a ghost to help. I can't
whale the daylights out of the ghost, and I don't suppose it would
be proper for a first selectman to cuff the ears of the woman that
said females was followin' me, wailin' and gnashin' their teeth, but
I can lick that yaller-fingered, cigarette-suckin' dude, and pay the
fine for so doin'--and reckon I've got my money's worth."

"You need a guardeen," snorted Hiram. "She will put on her robe and
accuse you of havin' the ghost of a murdered man a-chasin' you."

The Cap'n grew white under his tan at this remark, made by Hiram in
all guilelessness, and the memory of a certain Portuguese sailor,
slipped overboard after a brief but busy mutiny, went shuddering
through his thoughts.

"Ain't got anything like that on your conscience, have you?" demanded
the old showman, bluntly.

"She didn't say anything only about women, did she?" evaded the
Cap'n.

"Didn't notice anything last night. She may be savin' something else
for this evenin'," was Hiram's consoling answer. His air and the
baleful glance he bent on his neighbor indicated that he still held
that irascible gentleman responsible for their joint misfortune. And,
to show further displeasure, he whirled and stumped away across the
fields toward his home.

Cap'n Aaron Sproul attended the show at the town hall that evening.

He went alone, after his wife had plaintively sighed her refusal to
accompany him. He hadn't intended to go. But he was drawn by a certain
fatal fascination. He had a sailor's superstitious half-belief in
the supernatural. He had caught word during the day of some
astonishing revelations made by the seeress as to other persons in
town, either by lucky guess or through secret pre-information, as
his common sense told him. And yet his sneaking superstition
whispered that there was "something in it, after all." If that
mesmerist's spirit of retaliation should carry him to the extent of
hinting about that Portuguese sailor, Cap'n Sproul resolved to be
in that hall, ready to stand up and beard his defamers.

Evidently Professor Derolli spotted his enemy; for Madame Dawn, in
order that vengeanc