ent.

"I'll thank you for the directions," said the stranger. "They were
not able to give me exact instructions at the village--at least, I
cannot remember them."

"I ain't no dadfired guide-board to stand here all day and p'int the
way to Pharline Pike's," roared Ward, with a heat that astonished
the decayed gentleman.

"I don't want no elder to go away from this place and report that
he wa'n't used respectful," said Sproul, meekly, addressing the
stranger. "You'll have to excuse Colonel Ward here. P'r'aps I can
say for him, as a pertickler friend, what it wouldn't be modest for
him to say himself. The fact is, he's en--"

The infuriated Ward leaped up and down on the sward and shrieked the
road instructions to the wayfarer, who hustled away, casting
apprehensive glances over his shoulder.

But when the Colonel turned again on the Cap'n, the latter rose and
hobbled with extravagant limpings toward the house.

"I don't reckon I can stay out here and pass talk with you,
brother-in-law," he called back, reproachfully. "Strangers, passin'
as they be, don't like to hear no such language as you're usin'. Jest
think of what that elder said!"

Ward planted himself upon a garden chair, and gazed down the road
in the direction in which the strangers had gone. He seemed to be
thinking deeply, and the Cap'n watched him from behind one of the
front-room curtains.

Two more men passed up the road. At the first, the Colonel flourished
his arms and indulged in violent language, the gist of which the Cap'n
did not catch. He ran to the fence when the second accosted him, tore
off a picket, and flung it after the fleeing man.

Then he sat down and pondered more deeply still.

He cast occasional glances toward the house, and once or twice arose
as though to come in. But he sat down and continued to gaze in the
direction of Pharlina Pike's house.

It was late in the afternoon when a woman came hurrying down the slope
through the maple-sugar grove. The Cap'n, at his curtain with his
keen sea eye, saw her first. He had been expecting her arrival. He
knew her in the distance for Pharlina Pike, and realized that she
had come hot-foot across lots.

Sproul was under the big maple as soon as she.

"For mercy sakes, Colonel Gid," she gasped, "come over to my house
as quick's you can!"

She had come up behind him, and he leaped out of his chair with a
snap like a jack-in-the-box.

"There's somethin' on, and I knowed it!" he squ