“Say, you look here!” roared the old showman; “you stay on earth.  Don’t you try to fly and take us with you.  There’s the principal trouble in gettin’ at facts,” he explained, whirling on the Cap’n.  “Investigators don’t get down to cases.  Talk with a stutterer, and if you don’t look sharp you’ll get to stutterin’ yourself.  Now, if we don’t look out, Gammon here will have us believin’ in witches before we’ve investigated.”

“You been sayin’ right along that you did believe in ’em,” grunted the first selectman.

“Northin’ of the sort!” declared Hiram.  “I was only showin’ you that when you rose up and hollered that there never was any witches you didn’t know what you were talkin’ about.”

While Cap’n Sproul was still blinking at him, trying to comprehend the exact status of Hiram’s belief, that forceful inquisitor, who had been holding his victim in check with upraised and admonitory digit, resumed: 

“Old maid or widder?”

“Widder.”

“Did deceased leave her that farm, title clear, and well-fixed financially?”

“Yes,” acknowledged Mr. Gammon.

“Now,” Hiram leaned forward and wagged that authoritative finger directly under the other’s case-knife nose, “what was it she done to you to make you get up this witch-story business about her?  Here!  Hold on!” he shouted, detecting further inclination on the part of Mr. Gammon to rail about his bedevilment.  “You talk good Yankee common sense!  Down to cases!  What started this?  You can’t fool me, not for a minute!  I’ve been round the world too much.  I know every fake from a Patagonian cockatoo up to and including the ghost of Bill Beeswax.  She done something to you.  Now, what was it?”

Mr. Gammon was cowed.  He fingered his dewlap and closed and unclosed his lips.

“Out with it!” insisted Hiram.  “If you don’t, me and the selectman will have you sued for slander.”

“Up to a week ago,” confessed Mr. Gammon, gazing away from the blazing eyes of Hiram into the placid orbs of the calf in the tree, “we was goin’ to git married.  Farms adjoined.  She knowed me and I knowed her.  I’ve been solemn since Mis’ Gammon died, but I’ve been gittin’ over it.  We was goin’ to jine farms and I was goin’ to live over to her place, because it wouldn’t be so pleasant here with Mis’ Gammon—­”

He hesitated, and ducked despondent head in the direction of the front yard.

“Well, seconds don’t usually want to set in the front parlor window and read firsts’ epitaphs for amusement,” remarked Hiram, grimly.  “What then?”

“Well, then all at once she wouldn’t let me into the house, and she shooed me off’m her front steps like she would a yaller cat, and when I tried to find out about it that young Haskell feller that she’s hired to do her chores come over here and told me that he wasn’t goin’ to stay there much longer, ’cause she had turned witch, and had put a cluck onto the cat when the old hen—­”