What have you done, Aaron?" she inquired with timorous solicitude.

"Canvassed this town from one end to the other and by moral suasion,
the riot act, and a few other things I've got pledges from
three-quarters of the voters that when I pass in my resignation
to-morrow they'll vote that they won't accept it and will ask me to
keep on in office for the good of Smyrna. This town won't get a chance
to yoke me up with your brother Gid and point us out as a steer team
named 'Down and Out!' He's 'Down' but I ain't 'Out' yet, not by a
dam--excuse me, Louada Murilla! But I've been mixin' into politics
and talkin' political talk."

"And I had so hoped you were out of it," she sighed, as she followed
him to their repose.

She watched him make ready and depart for town hall the next morning
without comment, but the wistful look in her eyes spoke volumes.
Cap'n Sproul was silent with the air of a man with big events fronting
him.

She watched the teams jog along the highway toward the village. She
saw them returning in dusty procession later in the forenoon--signal
that the meeting was over and the voters were returning to their
homes.

In order to beguile the monotony of waiting she hunted up the
blank-book in which she had begun to write "The Life Story of Gallant
Captain Aaron Sproul." She read the brief notes that she had been
able to collect from him and reflected with bitterness that there
was little hope of securing much more data from a man tied up with
the public affairs of a town which exacted so much from its first
selectman.

Upon her musings entered Cap'n Sproul, radiant, serene. He bent and
kissed her after the fashion of the days of the honeymoon.

"Whew!" he whistled, sitting down in a porch chair and gazing off
across the blue hills. "It's good to get out of that steam and stew
down in that hall. I say, Louada Murilla, there ain't in this whole
world a much prettier view than that off acrost them hills. It's a
good picture for a man to spend his last days lookin' at."

"I'm afraid you aren't going to get much time to look at it, husband."
She fondled her little book and there was a bit of pathos in her voice.

"Got all the time there is!"

There was a buoyancy in his tones that attracted her wondering
attention.

"They wouldn't accept that resignation," he said with great
satisfaction. "It was unanimous. Them yaller dogs never showed
themselves. Yes, s'r, unanimous, and a good round howl of a hurrah