--identity and occupation revealed by the lettering on
the side of his wagon:

T. TAYLOR
STOVES AND TINWARE
VIENNA

Mr. Luce had his rubber boots set wide apart, and his tucked-in
trousers emphasized the bow in his legs. With those legs and his
elongated neck and round, knobby head, Mr. Luce closely resembled
one of a set of antique andirons.

"You want to look out you don't squdge me too fur in this," said Mr.
Luce, warningly. "I've been squdged all my life, and I've 'bout come
to the limick. Now look out you don't squdge me too fur!"

He side-stepped and stood athwart his door, the frame of which had
been recently narrowed by half, the new boarding showing glaringly
against the old. When one understood the situation, this new boarding
had a very significant appearance.

Mr. Luce had gone over into Vienna, where his reputation for
shiftiness was not as well known, and had secured from Mr. T. Taylor,
recently set up in the stove business, a new range with all modern
attachments, promising to pay on the instalment plan. Stove once
installed, Mr. Luce had immediately begun to "improve" his mansion
by building a new door-frame too narrow to permit the exit of the
stove. Then Mr. Luce had neglected to pay, and, approached by
replevin papers, invoked the statute that provides that a man's house
cannot be ripped in pieces to secure goods purchased on credit.

Constable Nute, unable to cope with the problem, had driven to Smyrna
village and summoned the first selectman, and the Cap'n had solicited
Hiram Look to transport him, never having conquered his sailor's fear
of a horse.

"It ain't goin' to be twitted abroad in Vienny nor any other town
that we let you steal from outsiders in any such way as this,"
declared the first selectman, once on the ground. "Folks has allus
cal'lated on your stealin' about so much here in town in the run of
a year, and haven't made no great fuss about it. But we ain't goin'
to harbor and protect any general Red Rover and have it slurred
against this town. Take down that scantlin' stuff and let this man
have his stove."

"You can squdge me only so fur and no furder," asserted Luce, sullenly,
holding down his loose upper lip with his yellow teeth as though to
keep it from flapping in the wind. Within the mansion there was the
mellow rasp of a tin of biscuit on an oven floor, the slam of an oven
door, and Mrs. Luce appeared dusting flour from her hands. All who
knew Mrs. Luc