He unfolded a dirty strip of paper and recited: 

   “There is no sting in death;
    Below this stone there lies
    A man who lost his mortal breath
    Three times—­”

Mr. Crymble looked up from the paper.

“I have thought of ‘And death defies.’  But that might sound like boasting.”

“End it up, ‘And still he lies,’” growled Cap’n Sproul.  But the thin man meekly evaded the sarcasm.

“That would be a repetition of the rhyme,” he objected.  “I see you were right when you said you did not write poetry.”

“P’r’aps I ain’t no poet,” cried the Cap’n, bridling.  “But I’m the first selectman of this town, and I’ve got considerable to do with runnin’ it and keepin’ things straightened out.  You may be dead, but you ain’t buried yet.  I’ve got two errunts for you.  You go hunt up Bat Reeves and tell him that the weddin’ next Tuesday is all off, and for good reasons—­and that you’re one of the reasons, and that there are nine others just as good but which you haven’t got time to repeat.  Then you go home to your wife and settle down, throw away that coffin-plate, tear up that epitaph, and stop this dyin’ habit.  It’s a bad one to get into.”

“I won’t do any such thing,” returned the prodigal, stubbornly.  “I lived fifteen years with a woman that wouldn’t let me smoke, busted my cider jug in the cellar, jawed me from sun-up till bedtime, hid my best clothes away from me like I was ten years old, wouldn’t let me pipe water from the spring, and stuck a jeroosly water-pail under my nose every time I showed in sight of the house.  I haven’t died three times, all by violent means, not to stay dead so far’s she’s concerned.  Now you tell me where to get the key to that school-house and I’ll move in.”

For the first time in their conversation Mr. Crymble dropped his meek manner.  His little eyes blazed.  His drooping mouth snarled and his yellow teeth showed defiantly.  Cap’n Sproul always welcomed defiance.  It was the thin man’s passive resignation at the beginning of their acquaintance that caused the Cap’n to poke the ash-stick back under the stove.  Now he buttoned his pea-jacket, pulled his hat down firmly, and spat first into one fist and then the other.

“You can walk, Crymble, if you’re a mind to and will go quiet,” he announced, measuring the other’s gaunt frame with contemptuous eye.  “I’d rather for your sake that the citizens would see you walkin’ up there like a man.  But if you won’t walk, then I’ll pick you up and stick you behind my ear like a lead-pencil and take you there.”

“Where?”

“To your house.  Where else should a husband be goin’ that’s been gallivantin’ off for twenty years?”

And detecting further recalcitrancy in the face of his visitor, he pounced on him, scrabbled up a handful of cloth in the back of his coat, and propelled him out of doors and up the street.  After a few protesting squawks Mr. Crymble went along.