murmur, to sniff spitefully, and to jostle
slowly out. Mrs. Look and Mrs. Sproul showed some signs of lingering,
but Hiram suggested dryly that they'd better stick with the band.

"We'll be man and wife up home," he said, "and no twits and no hard
feelin's. But just now you are Double-yer T. Double-yers and we are
tavern-keepers--and we don't hitch." They went.

"Now, Nute," barked Hiram, when the constable lingered as though
rather ashamed to depart with the women, "you get out of here and
you stay out, or I'll cook that stuffed alligator and a few others
of these tangdoodiaps here and ram 'em down them old jaws of yours."
Therefore, Constable Nute went, too.

XXVIII

Moved by mutual impulse, Hiram and the Cap'n plodded through the
deserted tavern, up-stairs and down-stairs. When they went into the
kitchen the two hired girls were dragging their trunks to the door,
and scornfully resisted all appeals to remain. They said it was a
nasty rum-hole, and that they had reputations to preserve just as
well as some folks who thought they were better because they had money.
Fine hand of the W.T.W.'s shown thus early in the game of
tavern-keeping! There were even dirty dishes in the sink, so
precipitate was the departure.

In the stable, the hostler, a one-eyed servitor, with the piping
voice, wobbly gait, and shrunken features of the "white drunkard,"
was in his usual sociable state of intoxication, and declared that
he would stick by them. He testified slobberingly as to his devotion
to Mr. Parrott, declared that when the women descended Mr. Parrott
confided to him the delicate task of "hiding the stuff," and that
he had managed to conceal quite a lot of it.

"Well, dig it up and throw it away," directed Hiram.

"Oh, only a fool in the business buries rum," confided the hostler.
"I've been in the rum business, and I know. They allus hunts haymows
and sullers. But I know how to hide it. I'm shrewd about them things."

"We don't want no rum around here," declared the showman with
positiveness.

The hostler winked his one eye at him, and, having had a rogue's long
experience in roguery, plainly showed that he believed a command of
this sort to be merely for the purpose of publication and not an
evidence of good faith.

"And there won't be much rum left round here if we only let him alone,"
muttered Hiram as he and the Cap'n walked back to the house. "I only
wisht them hired girls had as good an attraction fo