y after this.
Be ye ready to listen to reason?"

"You're a robber!" gasped the Colonel, trying again to muster his
anger.

"I've got a proposition to make so that there won't be no pull-haulin'
and lawyers to pay, and all that."

"What is it?"

"Pardnership between you and me--equal pardners. I've been lookin'
for jest this chance to go into business."

The Colonel leaped up, and began to stamp round his wagon.

"No, sir," he howled at each stamp. "I'll go to the poor-farm first."

"Shouldn't wonder if I could put you there," calmly rejoined the
Cap'n. "These forced lickidations to settle estates is something
awful when the books ain't been kept any better'n yours. I shouldn't
be a mite surprised to find that the law would get a nab on you for
cheatin' your poor sister."

Again the Colonel's face grew white.

"All is," continued the Cap'n, patronizingly, "if we can keep it all
in the fam'ly, nice and quiet, you ain't goin' to git showed up. Now,
I ain't goin' to listen to no more abuse out of you. I'll give you
jest one minute to decide. Look me in the eye. I mean business."

"You've got me where I'll have to," wailed the Colonel.

"Is it pardnership?"

"Yas!" He barked the word.

"Now, Colonel Ward, there's only one way for you and me to do bus'ness
the rest of our lives, and that's on the square, cent for cent. We
might as well settle that p'int now. Fix up that toll bill, or it's
all off. I won't go into business with a man that don't pay his honest
debts."

He came forward with his hand out.

The Colonel paid.

"Now," said the Cap'n, "seein' that the new man is here, ready to
take holt, and the books are all square, I'll ride home with you.
I've been callin' it home now for a couple of days."

The new man at the toll-house heard the Cap'n talking serenely as
they drove away.

"I didn't have any idee, Colonel, I was goin' to like it so well on
shore as I do. Of course, you meet some pleasant and some unpleasant
people, but that sister of yours is sartinly the finest woman that
ever trod shoe-leather, and it was Providunce a-speakin' to me when
she--"

The team passed away into the gloomy mouth of the Smyrna bridge.

III

Once on a time when the Wixon boy put Paris-green in the Trufants'
well, because the oldest Trufant girl had given him the mitten, Marm
Gossip gabbled in Smyrna until flecks of foam gathered in the corners
of her mouth.

But when Cap'n Aaron Sproul, late of the