ram scratched his nose and admitted that now the Cap'n had asked
for friendly candor, he really didn't take much stock in witches.

"There! I knew it!" cried the selectman, with unction and relief.
"And now that you've had your joke and done with it, let's dump out
old coffin-mug and his gander and turn round and go back about our
business."

But Hiram promptly whipped along.

"Oh, thunder!" he ejaculated. "While we're about it, we might as well
see it through. My curiosity is sort of stirred up."

The Cap'n was angry in good earnest again.

"Curiosity!" he snarled. "Now you've named it. I wouldn't own up to
bein' such a pickid-nosed old maid as that, not for a thousand
dollars!"

Hiram was wholly unruffled.

"How do you suppose any one ever knew enough to write a cyclopedy,"
said he, "if they didn't go investigate and find out? They went
official, just as we are goin' now."

Hiram seemed to take much content in that phase of the situation,
feeling that mere personal inquisitiveness was dignified in this
case under the aegis of law and authority. It was exactly this view
of the matter that most disturbed Cap'n Aaron Sproul, for that
hateful Pharisee, Squire Reeves, had supplied the law to compel his
own authority as selectman.

He sat with elbows on his knees, gloomily surveying a dim reflection
of himself in the dasher of Hiram's wagon. In pondering on the
trammels of responsibility the sour thought occurred to him, as it
had many times in the past year, that commanding a town was a
different proposition from being ruler of the _Jefferson P. Benn_
on the high seas--with the odds in favor of the __Benn__.

XVIII

The Cap'n had never visited that retired part of the town called
"Purgatory." He found Mr. Gammon's homestead to be a gray and unkempt
farm-house from which the weather had scrubbed the paint. The
front yard was bare of every vestige of grass and contained a clutter
that seemed to embrace everything namable, including a gravestone.

"What be ye gettin' ready for--an auction?" growled the Cap'n,
groutily, his seaman's sense of tidiness offended. "Who do you expect
will bid in a second-hand gravestone?"

"It ain't second-hand," replied the owner, reprovingly, as he eased
himself out of the wagon. "Mis' Gammon, my first wife, is buried there.
'Twas by her request. She made her own layin'-out clothes, picked
her bearers and music, and selected the casket. She was a capable
woman."

"It's