empers had been cocked by such events as had beset Hiram Look
and Aaron Sproul. Taking it that the constable was trying to pry into
their business in order to regale the public on their misfortunes,
Hiram threw a town-ledger at him, and the Cap'n kicked at him as he
fled through the door of the office.

That night each was met at the front door by hysterics, and a third
letter. The mystery was becoming eerie.

"Dang rabbit her miserable pelt!" growled Hiram at the despairing
morning conference under the poplars. "She must be livin' in a hole
round here, or else come in a balloon. I tell you, Cap'n Sproul, it's
got to be stopped some way or the two families will be in the lunatic
asylum inside of a week."

"Or more prob'ly in the divorce court. Louada Murilla vows and
declares she'll get a bill if I don't tell her the truth, and when
you've told the truth once and sworn to it, and it don't stick, what
kind of a show is a lie goin' to stand, when a man ain't much of a
liar?"

"If she's goin' to be caught we've got to catch her," insisted Hiram.
"She's crazy, or else she wouldn't be watchin' for us to leave the
house so as to grab in and toss one of them letters. Looks to me it's
just revenge, and to make trouble. The darned fool can't marry both
of us. I didn't sleep last night--not with that woman of mine settin'
and boohooin'. I just set and thought. And the result of the thinkin'
is that we'll take our valises to-day and march to the
railroad-station in the face and eyes of everybody so that it will
get spread round that we've gone. And we'll come back by team from
some place down the line, and lay low either round your premises or
mine and ketch that infernal, frowzle-headed sister of Jim the Penman
by the hind leg and snap her blasted head off."

"What be you goin' to tell the wimmen?"

"Tell 'em northin'."

"There'll be the devil to pay. They'll think we're elopin'."

"Well, let 'em think," said Hiram, stubbornly. "They can't do any
harder thinkin' than I've been thinkin', and they can't get a divorce
in one night. When we ketch that woman we can preach a sermon to 'em
with a text, and she'll be the text."

Cap'n Sproul sighed and went for his valise.

"What she said to me as I come away curled the leaves in the front
yard," confided Hiram, as they walked together down the road.

"Ditto and the same," mourned the Cap'n.

At dusk that evening they dismounted from a Vienna livery-hitch on
a back road i