But Cap'n Sproul, joining the hilarious group at the
graveyard fence, noted that some gruesome village humorist had
seriously interfered with the poetic idea. Painted on a planed board
set up against the monument was this:

I'm Watching Here Both Night and Day,
So Number One Can't Get Away.

"That's kind o' pat, Cap'n, considerin' he's goin' to get married
to Number Two next week," suggested one of the loungers.

Cap'n Sproul scowled into the grin that the other turned on him.

"I ain't got any regard for a human dogfish like Bat Reeves," he
grunted, his heart full of righteous bitterness against a proclaimed
enemy, "but as first selectman of this town I don't stand for makin'
a comic joke-book out of this cemetery." He climbed over the fence,
secured the offending board and split it across his broad toe. Then
with the pieces under his arm he trudged on toward the town office,
having it in his mind to use the board for kindling in the barrel
stove.

One strip he whittled savagely into shavings and the other he broke
into fagots, and when the fire was snapping merrily in the rusty stove
he resumed a labor upon which he had been intent for several days.
Predecessors in office had called it "writing the town report." Cap'n
Sproul called it "loggin' the year's run."

A pen never did hang easy in the old shipmaster's stiff fingers. The
mental travail of this unwonted literary effort wrung his brain. An
epic poet struggling with his masterpiece could not have been more
rapt. And his nerves were correspondingly touchy. Constable Zeburee
Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning
word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first
selectman's privacy. He delivered it at Broadway's store.

"Talk about your r'yal Peeruvian tigers with eighteen rings on their
tails! He's settin' there with his hair standin' straight up and ink
on his nose and clear to his elbows, and he didn't let me even get
started in conversation. He up and throwed three ledger-books and
five sticks of wood at me, and--so I come away," added Mr. Nute,
resignedly. "I don't advise nobody to go in there."

However, the warning delivered at Broadway's store did not reach a
certain tall, thin man; for the tall, thin man stalked straight
through the village and up to the door inscribed "Selectman's
Office." In his hand he carried a little valise about as large as
a loaf of yeast bread. The shrewish December wind