still lookin' healthy. Come along! Look happy, for
you're goin' to be queen of the May, mother!"

But when they started to drag him from the room both women interposed.

"Hiram, dear," pleaded his wife, "please let the man go. Louada
Murilla and I know now what a scalawag he is, and we know how we've
misjudged both you and Cap'n Sproul, and we'll spend the rest of our
lives showin' you that we're sorry. But let him go! If you make any
such uproar as you're talkin' of it will all come out that he made
your wives believe that you were bad men. It will shame us to death,
Hiram. Please let him go."

"Please let him go, Aaron," urged Mrs. Sproul, with all the fervor
of her feelings. "It will punish him worst if you drop him here and
now, like a snake that you've picked up by mistake."

Cap'n Sproul and Hiram Look stared at each other a long time,
meditating. They went apart and mumbled in colloquy. Then the Cap'n
trudged to his front door, opened it, and held it open. Hiram cut
the strip that bound their captive's wrists.

The second selectman had not the courage to raise his eyes to meet
the stares directed on him. With head bowed and the tall feather
nodding over his face he slunk out into the night. And Hiram and the
Cap'n called after him in jovial chorus:

"Good-night, marm!"

"This settling down in life seems to be more or less of a complicated
performance," observed Cap'n Sproul when the four of them were alone,
"but just at this minute I feel pretty well settled. I reckon I've
impressed it on a few disturbers in this town that I'm the sort of
a man that's better left alone. It looks to me like a long, calm spell
of weather ahead."

XVII

Mr. Gammon's entrance into the office of the first selectman of
Smyrna was unobtrusive. In fact, to employ a paradox, it was so
unobtrusive as to be almost spectacular.

The door opened just about wide enough to admit a cat, were that cat
sufficiently slab-sided, and Mr. Gammon slid his lath-like form in
edgewise. He stood beside the door after he had shut it softly behind
him. He gazed forlornly at Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman.
Outside sounded a plaintive "_Squawnk!_"

Cap'n Sproul at that moment had his fist up ready to spack it down
into his palm to add emphasis to some particularly violent
observation he was just then making to Mr. Tate, highway "surveyor"
in Tumble-dick District. Cap'n Sproul jerked his chin around over
his shoulder so as to stare a