“’Tend to cases!  ’Tend to cases!” broke in Hiram, impatiently.

“And about that time the things began to act out round my place, and the Haskell boy told me that she was braggin’ how she had me bewitched.”

“And you believed that kind of infernal tomrot?” inquired the showman, wrathfully.  Somewhat to the Cap’n’s astonishment, Hiram seemed to be taking only a sane and normal view of the thing.

“I did, after I went over and taxed her with it, and she stood off and pointed her shotgun at me and said that yes, she was a witch, and if I didn’t get away and keep away she would turn me into a caterpillar and kill me with a fly-spanker.  There!  When a woman says that about herself, what be ye goin’ to do—­tell her she’s a liar, or be a gent and believe her?” Mr. Gammon was bridling a little.

Hiram looked at “Cheerful Charles” and jerked his head around and stared at the Cap’n as though hoping for some suggestion.  But the selectman merely shook his head with a pregnant expression of “I told you so!”

Hiram got up and stamped around the tree to cover what was evidently momentary embarrassment.  All at once he kicked at something in the grass, bent over and peered at it, looked up at the calf, then picked up the object on the ground and stuffed it deep into his trousers pocket.

“You said that chore feller’s name was Haskell, hey?” he demanded, returning and standing over Mr. Gammon.

“Simmy Haskell,” said the other.

“Well, now, what have you done to him?”

“Nothin’—­never—­no, sir—­never nothin’!” insisted Mr. Gammon, with such utter conviction that Hiram forebore to question further.  He whirled on his heel and started away toward the chimney that poked above the rise of land.

“Come along!” he called, gruffly, over his shoulder, and the two followed.

It was a trim little place that was revealed to them.  A woman in a sunbonnet was on her knees near some plants in the cozy front yard, and a youth was wheeling apples up out of the orchard.

The youth set down his barrow and surveyed them with some curiosity as they came up to him, Hiram well ahead, looming with all his six feet two, his plug-hat flashing in the sun.  Hiram did not pause to palter with the youth.  He grabbed him by the back of the neck with one huge hand, and with the other tapped against the Haskell boy’s nose the object he had picked up from the grass.

“Next time you put a man’s calf up a tree look out that you don’t drop your knife in the wrassle.”

“’Tain’t my knife!” gasped the accused.

“Lie to me, will ye?  Lie to me—­a man that’s associated with liars all my life?  Not your knife, when your name is scratched on the handle?  And don’t you know that two officers stood right over behind the stone wall and saw you do it?  Because you wasn’t caught in your cat-yowlin’ round and your ox-chain foolishness and your other didoes, do you think you can fool a detective like me?  You come along to State Prison!  I was intendin’ to let you off if you owned up and told all you know—­but now that you’ve lied to me, come along to State Prison!”