d well-fixed
financially?"

"Yes," acknowledged Mr. Gammon.

"Now," Hiram leaned forward and wagged that authoritative finger
directly under the other's case-knife nose, "what was it she done
to you to make you get up this witch-story business about her? Here!
Hold on!" he shouted, detecting further inclination on the part of
Mr. Gammon to rail about his bedevilment. "You talk good Yankee
common sense! Down to cases! What started this? You can't fool me,
not for a minute! I've been round the world too much. I know every
fake from a Patagonian cockatoo up to and including the ghost of Bill
Beeswax. She done something to you. Now, what was it?"

Mr. Gammon was cowed. He fingered his dewlap and closed and unclosed
his lips.

"Out with it!" insisted Hiram. "If you don't, me and the selectman
will have you sued for slander."

"Up to a week ago," confessed Mr. Gammon, gazing away from the blazing
eyes of Hiram into the placid orbs of the calf in the tree, "we was
goin' to git married. Farms adjoined. She knowed me and I knowed her.
I've been solemn since Mis' Gammon died, but I've been gittin' over
it. We was goin' to jine farms and I was goin' to live over to her
place, because it wouldn't be so pleasant here with Mis' Gammon--"

He hesitated, and ducked despondent head in the direction of the
front yard.

"Well, seconds don't usually want to set in the front parlor window
and read firsts' epitaphs for amusement," remarked Hiram, grimly.
"What then?"

"Well, then all at once she wouldn't let me into the house, and she
shooed me off'm her front steps like she would a yaller cat, and when
I tried to find out about it that young Haskell feller that she's
hired to do her chores come over here and told me that he wasn't goin'
to stay there much longer, 'cause she had turned witch, and had put
a cluck onto the cat when the old hen--"

"'Tend to cases! 'Tend to cases!" broke in Hiram, impatiently.

"And about that time the things began to act out round my place, and
the Haskell boy told me that she was braggin' how she had me
bewitched."

"And you believed that kind of infernal tomrot?" inquired the showman,
wrathfully. Somewhat to the Cap'n's astonishment, Hiram seemed to
be taking only a sane and normal view of the thing.

"I did, after I went over and taxed her with it, and she stood off
and pointed her shotgun at me and said that yes, she was a witch,
and if I didn't get away and keep away she would turn me int