There was such vengefulness and authority in the big man’s visage that the Haskell boy wilted in unconditional surrender.

“He got me into the scrape.  I’ll tell on him.  I don’t want to go to State Prison,” he wailed, and then confession flowed from him with the steady gurgle of water from a jug.  “He come to me, and he says, says he, ’He won’t ever be no kind of a boss for you.  If he marries her you’ll get fed on bannock and salt pork.  He’s sourer’n bonny-clabber and meaner’n pig-swill.  Like enough he won’t keep help, anyway, and will let everything go to rack and ruin, the same as he has on his own place.  I’m the one to stick to,’ says he.  ’I’ve got a way planned, and all I need is your help and we’ll stand together,’ he says, ‘and here’s ten dollars in advance.’  And I took it and done what he planned.  I needed the money, and I done it.  He says to me that we’ll do things to him to make him act crazy, and we’ll tell her that he’s dangerous, and then you can tell him, says he, that she’s turned witch, and is doin’ them things to him; ’’cause a man that has got his first wife buried in front of his doorstep is fool enough to believe most anything,’ says he.”

“Well,” remarked Hiram, after a long breath, “this ‘sezzer,’ whoever he may be, when he got to sezzin’, seems to have made up his mind that there was one grand, sweet song of love in this locality that was goin’ to be sung by a steam-calliope, and wind up with boiler bustin’.”

“Why in devilnation don’t you ask him who ’twas that engineered it?” demanded Cap’n Sproul, his eyes blazing with curiosity.

“An official investigation,” declared Hiram, with a relish he could not conceal, as he returned the Cap’n’s earlier taunt upon that gentleman himself, “is not an old maids’ quiltin’-bee, where they throw out the main point as soon’s they get their hoods off, and then spend the rest of the afternoon talkin’ it over.  Things has to take their right and proper course in an official investigation. I’m the official investigator.”

He turned on Mr. Gammon.

“What do you think now, old hearse-hoss?  Have you heard enough to let you in on this?  Or do you want to be proved out as the original old Mister Easymark, in a full, illustrated edition, bound in calf?  So fur’s I’m concerned, I’ve heard enough on that line to make me sick.”

This amazing demolishment of his superstition left Mr. Gammon gasping.  Only one pillar of that mental structure was standing.  He grabbed at it.

“I didn’t believe she was the witch till she told me so herself,” he stammered.  “She never lied to me.  I believed what she told me with her own mouth.”

The Haskell boy, still in the clutch of Hiram, evidently believed that the kind of confession that was good for the soul was full confession.

“I told her that the time you was dangerousest was when any one disputed with you about not havin’ the witches.  I told her that if you ever said anything she’d better join in and agree with you, and humor you, ’cause that’s the only way to git along with crazy folks.”