le for slander! Now, I've come here
with an order from the court, and your duty is laid before you. When
a town officer has sworn to do his duty and don't do it, a citizen
can make it hot for him." Mr. Gammon, his bony hands caressing his
legal document, was no longer apologetic. "Be you goin' to do your
duty--yes or no?"

"If--if--you ain't a--say, what have you got that rope around your
neck for?" demanded the first selectman.

"To show to the people that if I ain't protected from persecution
and relieved of my misery by them that's in duty bound to do the same,
I'll go out and hang myself--and the blame will then be placed where
it ought to be placed," declared Mr. Gammon, shaking a gaunt finger
at the Cap'n.

As a man of hard common sense the Cap'n wanted to pounce on the paper,
tear it up, announce his practical ideas on the witchcraft question,
and then kick Mr. Gammon and his gander into the middle of the street.
But as town officer he gazed at the end of that monitory finger and
took second thought.

And as he pondered, Hiram Look broke in with a word.

"I know it looks suspicious, comin' from a Reeves," said he, "but
I hardly see anything about it to start your temper so, Cap."

"Why, he might just as well have sent me a writin' to go out and take
a census of the hossflies between here and the Vienny town-line,"
sputtered the first selectman; "or catch the moskeeters in Snell's
bog and paint 'em red, white, and blue. I tell you, it's a dirty,
sneakin', underhand way of gettin' me laughed at."

"I ain't a humorous man myself, and there ain't no--" began Mr.
Gammon.

"Shut up!" bellowed the Cap'n. "It was only last week, Hiram, that
that old gob of cat-meat over there that calls himself a lawyer said
I'd taken this job of selectman as a license to stick my nose into
everybody's business in town. Now, here he is, rigging me out with
a balloon-jib and stays'ls"--he pointed a quivering finger at the
paper that Mr. Gammon was nursing--"and sendin' me off on a tack that
will pile me up on Fool Rocks. Everybody can say it of me, then--that
I'm stickin' my nose in. Because there ain't any witches, and never
was any witches."

"Ain't witches?" squealed Mr. Gammon. "Why, you--"

But Hiram checked the outburst with flapping palm.

"Here!" he cried. "The two of you wait just a minute. Keep right still
until I come back. Don't say a word to each other. It will only be
wasting breath."

He went out, and they