“That dratted Queen of Sheby!  I knowed she’d be the death of one of us some day.  I swan!  Tunis Latham, come here!  I can’t get her out, and you know derned well Prudence can’t stand on her head that a way without strangling.  Lend us a hand, boy.  This is something awful!  Something awful!”

Tunis Latham, much disturbed by the old man’s words and excited manner, pushed into the dimly lit interior of the barn.

CHAPTER III

THE QUEEN OF SHEBA

The barn was a roomy place, as well built as the Ball house itself, and quite as old.  The wagon floor had a wide door, front and rear.  The stables were on either side of this floor and the mows were above.  In one mow was a small quantity of hay and some corn fodder, but the upper reaches were filled only with a brown dusk.

The pale face of a gray mare was visible at the opening over one of the mangers.  She was the sole recognized occupant of the stable.  In a dark corner Tunis Latham saw a huge grain box, for once the Ball farm had supported several span of oxen and a considerable dairy herd, its cover raised and its maw gaping wide.  There was something moving there in the murk, something fluttering.

“Come here, boy!” gasped Cap’n Ira, hurrying across the barn door.  “I’m so crippled I can’t git her up, and she’s dove clean to the lower hold, tryin’ to scrape out a capful o’ oats for that dratted Queen of Sheby.”

“Aunt Prue!” shouted Tunis, reverting to the title he had addressed her by in his boyhood.  “It’s never her?”

A muffled voice stammered: 

“Get me out!  Get me out!”

“Heave hard, Tunis!  All together now!” gasped Cap’n Ira, as the younger man reached over the old woman’s struggling heels and seized her around the waist.

“Up she comes!” continued the excited old man, as though he were bossing a capstan crew starting one of the Susan Gatskill’s anchors.

Tunis Latham set Prudence Ball on her feet, but the old woman was forced to lean against the stalwart young man for a minute.  She addressed her husband in some heat.

“Goodness gracious gallop!  Why don’t you sing a chantey over me, I want to know?  You’d think I was a bale of jute being snaked out of a ship’s hold.  Good land!”

“There, there, Prudence!” exclaimed Cap’n Ira.  “You’re safe, after all!  It—­it was something awful!”

“I cal’late it was,” rejoined the old woman rather bitterly.  “And I didn’t get them oats, after all.”

“I’ll ’tend to all that, Aunt Prue,” said Tunis.

“If it hadn’t been for that dratted Queen of Sheby”—­Cap’n Ira glared malevolently at the rather surprised-looking countenance of the gray mare in her box—­“you wouldn’t have got into that jam.”

“If it hadn’t been for you taking that dose of snuff when I was expecting nothing of the kind, I wouldn’t have dove into that feed box, Ira, and you know it very well.”