ring, dove hand into
breast-pocket and pulled out a crumpled letter.

"Well, I'll be dummed!" quoth the two in one voice.

"I don't understand northin' about it," said Hiram, plaintively.
"But whatever it is, it has put me in a devil of a fix."

"If you're havin' any more trouble to your house than I'm havin' over
to mine, then you've somethin' that I don't begrudge you none," added
the Cap'n, gloomily.

"Woman left it," related Hiram. "It was in the edge of the evenin',
and I hadn't come in from the barn. Woman throwed it onto the piazza
and run. Reckon she waited her chance so't my wife would get holt
of it. She did. She read it. And it's hell 'n' repeat on the Look
premises."

"Ditto and the same, word for word," said the Cap'n.

"The handwritin' ain't much different," said the ex-showman,
clutching Sproul's letter and comparing the two sheets. "But it's
wimmen's work with a pen--there ain't no gettin' round that."

Then his voice broke into quavering rage as he went on.

"You jest think of a lovin', trustin', and confidin' woman gettin'
holt of a gob of p'isen like that!" He shook the crackling sheet over
his head. "'Darlin' Hiram, how could you leave me, but if you will
come away with me now all will be forgiven and forgotten, from one
who loves you truly and well, and has followed you to remind you of
your promise.' My Gawd, Cap'n, ain't that something to raise a
blister on the motto, 'God Bless Our Home'?"

"It's done it over to my house," said the Cap'n, lugubriously.

"There never was any such woman--there never could have been any such
woman," Hiram went on in fervid protest. "There ain't nobody with
a license to chase me up."

"Ditto and the same," chimed in Cap'n Sproul.

"No one!"

"No one!" echoed the Cap'n.

They stood and looked at each other a little while, and then their
eyes shifted in some embarrassment.

"Of course," said Hiram, at last, moderating his tone of indignation,
"when a man ain't had no anchor he might have showed attentions such
as ladies expect from gents, and sometimes rash promises is made.
Now, perhaps--you understand I'm only supposin'--perhaps you've got
some one in mind that might have misjudged what you said to her--some
one that's got a little touched in her head, perhaps, and she's come
here. In that case it might give us a clue if you're a mind to own
up."

The Cap'n flushed at this clumsy attempt of Hiram to secure a
confidence.

"Seein' that you've th