o a
caterpillar and kill me with a fly-spanker. There! When a woman says
that about herself, what be ye goin' to do--tell her she's a liar,
or be a gent and believe her?" Mr. Gammon was bridling a little.

Hiram looked at "Cheerful Charles" and jerked his head around and
stared at the Cap'n as though hoping for some suggestion. But the
selectman merely shook his head with a pregnant expression of "I told
you so!"

Hiram got up and stamped around the tree to cover what was evidently
momentary embarrassment. All at once he kicked at something in the
grass, bent over and peered at it, looked up at the calf, then picked
up the object on the ground and stuffed it deep into his trousers
pocket.

"You said that chore feller's name was Haskell, hey?" he demanded,
returning and standing over Mr. Gammon.

"Simmy Haskell," said the other.

"Well, now, what have you done to _him_?"

"Nothin'--never--no, sir--never nothin'!" insisted Mr. Gammon, with
such utter conviction that Hiram forebore to question further. He
whirled on his heel and started away toward the chimney that poked
above the rise of land.

"Come along!" he called, gruffly, over his shoulder, and the two
followed.

It was a trim little place that was revealed to them. A woman in a
sunbonnet was on her knees near some plants in the cozy front yard,
and a youth was wheeling apples up out of the orchard.

The youth set down his barrow and surveyed them with some curiosity
as they came up to him, Hiram well ahead, looming with all his six
feet two, his plug-hat flashing in the sun. Hiram did not pause to
palter with the youth. He grabbed him by the back of the neck with
one huge hand, and with the other tapped against the Haskell boy's
nose the object he had picked up from the grass.

"Next time you put a man's calf up a tree look out that you don't
drop your knife in the wrassle."

"'Tain't my knife!" gasped the accused.

"Lie to me, will ye? Lie to me--a man that's associated with liars
all my life? Not your knife, when your name is scratched on the
handle? And don't you know that two officers stood right over behind
the stone wall and saw you do it? Because you wasn't caught in your
cat-yowlin' round and your ox-chain foolishness and your other
didoes, do you think you can fool a detective like me? You come along
to State Prison! I _was_ intendin' to let you off if you owned up
and told all you know--but now that you've lied to me, come along
to State