For the first time in many years color showed in the drab cheeks of the melancholy Mr. Gammon.  Two vivid red spots showed that, after all, it was blood, not water, that flowed in his veins.

“Dod lather you to a fritter, you little freckle-faced, snub-nosed son of seco!” he yelped, shrilly.  “I’ve been a mild and peaceable man all my life, but I’m a good mind to—­I’m a good mind to—­” He searched his meek soul for enormities of retribution, and declared:  “I’m a good mind to skin you, hide, pelt, and hair.  I’ll cuff your ears up to a pick, any way!” But Hiram pushed him away when he advanced.

“There!  That’s the way to talk up, Gammon,” he said, encouragingly.  “You are showin’ improvement.  Keep on that way and you’ll get to be quite a man.  I was afraid you wasn’t anything but a rusty marker for a graveyard lot.  If you don’t keep your back up some in this world, you’re apt to get your front knocked in.  But I can’t let you lick the boy!  This investigation is strictly official and according to the law, and he’s turned State’s evidence.  It’s the other critter that you want to be gettin’ your muscle up for—­the feller that was tryin’ to get the widder and the property away from you.  All the other evidence now bein’ in, you may tell the court, my son, who was that ‘sezzer.’  You sha’n’t be hurt!”

“It was Mister Batson Reeves, the second selectman,” blurted the youth.

There are moments in life when language fails, when words are vain; when even a whisper would take the edge from a situation.  Such a moment seemed that one when Hiram Look and Cap’n Sproul gazed at each other after the Haskell boy had uttered that name.

After a time Hiram turned, seized the boy by the scruff of his coat, and dragged him up to the front-yard fence, where the widow was gazing at them with increasing curiosity.

“Haskell boy,” commanded Hiram, “tell her—­tell her straight, and do it quick.”

And when the confession, which went more glibly the second time, was concluded, the investigator gave the culprit a toss in the direction of the Gammon farm, and shouted after him:  “Go get that calf down out of that apple-tree, and set down with him and trace out your family relationship.  You’ll probably find you’re first cousins.”

Mrs. Orff had sunk down weakly on a bed of asters, and was staring from face to face.

“Marm,” said Hiram, taking off his plug hat and advancing close to the fence, “Cap’n Sproul and myself don’t make it our business to pry into private affairs, or to go around this town saving decent wimmen from Batson Reeves.  But we seem to have more or less of it shoved onto us as a side-line.  You listen to me!  Batson Reeves was the man that lied to the girl I was engaged to thirty years ago, and broke us up and kept us apart till I came back here and licked him, and saved her just in the nick of time.  What do you think of a man of that stamp?”