That did it!

“Ninety-six,” repeated the Cap’n, dizzily; realizing that he had bounced off the track, he rose, kicked his chair out from under him and shoved a livid and infuriated visage into the thin man’s face.

“Whang-jacket your gor-righteously imperdence!” he bellowed, “what do you mean by stickin’ that fish-hawk beak of your’n into my business and make me lose count?  Get to Tophet out of here!”

The stranger calmly removed his ear-pads and gazed on the furious selectman with cold, gray and critical eyes.

“Your suggestion as to destination is not well considered,” he said.  “There is no hell.  There is no heaven.  I practically settled that point the first time I died.  The—­”

Cap’n Sproul, without especial attention to this astonishing announcement, was provoked beyond control by this stranger’s contemptuous stare.  He grabbed up an ash-stick that served him for a stove-poker.

“Get out of here,” he repeated, “or I’ll peg you down through this floor like a spike!”

But the thin man simply gazed at him mournfully and sat down.

“Havin’ been killed three times—­three times—­dead by violent means,” he said, “I have no fear of death.  Strike me—­I shall not resist.”

Even a bashi-bazouk must have quailed before that amazing declaration and that patient resignation to fate.  Cap’n Sproul looked him up and down for many minutes and then tucked the smutty ash-stick under the stove.

“Well, what insane horsepittle did you get out of by crawlin’ through the keyhole?” he demanded.

“Oh, I am not insane,” remonstrated the thin man.  “It is always easy for fools in this world to blat that insult when a man announces something that they don’t understand.  A man that knows enough to be selectman of Smyrna hadn’t ought to be a fool.  I hope you are not.  But you mustn’t blat like a fool.”

Cap’n Sproul could not seem to frame words just then.

“The first time I died,” pursued his remarkable guest, “I was frozen to death.”  He pulled up his trousers and showed a shank as shrunken as a peg-leg.  “All the meat came off.  The second time I died, a hoss kicked me on the head.  The third time, a tree fell on me.  And there is no hell—­there is no heaven.  If there had been I’d have gone to one place or the other.”

“If I was runnin’ either place you wouldn’t,” said the Cap’n, sourly.

The thin man crossed his legs and was beginning to speak, but the first selectman broke in savagely:  “Now look here, mister, this ain’t either a morgue, a receivin’-tomb, nor an undertaker’s parlor.  If you want to get buried and ain’t got the price I’ll lend it to you.  If you want to start over again in life I’ll pay for havin’ your birth-notice put into the newspaper.  But you want to say what you do want and get out of here.  I’ve got some town business to ’tend to, and I ain’t got any time to spend settin’ up with corpses.”