“Can they do any such infernal thing as that in law?” demanded the Cap’n.

“Blamed if I know.  But I never see northin’ yet they couldn’t do in law, if they see you comin’ and got the bind on you.”

“Law!” roared Cap’n Sproul, clacking his hard fist on the table rim.  “Law will tie more knots in a man’s business than a whale can tie in a harpoon-line.  There ain’t no justice in it—­only pickin’s and stealin’s.  Why, I had a mate once that was downed on T wharf in Bos’n and robbed, and they caught the men, and the mate couldn’t give witness bonds and they locked him up with ’em, and the men got away one night and wa’n’t ever caught, and the result was the mate served a jail sentence before they got his bonds matter fixed.  It was just the same as a jail sentence.  He had to stay there.”

Hiram was fully as doleful in regard to the possibilities of the law.

“Once they get old Soup-bone behind bars on them trespass cases,” he said, “he’ll stay there, all right.  They’ll fix it somehow—­you needn’t worry.  I reckon they’ll be arrestin’ him any minute now.  They’ve got cases enough marked down.”

“We’ll see about that,” snapped the Cap’n.

He buttoned his jacket and hurried into Hiram’s team, which was at the door.  And with Hiram as charioteer they made time toward the Crymble place.  Just out of the village they swept past Constable Zeburee Nute, whose slower Dobbin respectfully took the side of the highway.

“Bet ye money to mushmelons,” mumbled Hiram as they passed, “he’s got a warrant from old Alcander and is on his way to arrest.”

“I know he is,” affirmed the Cap’n.  “Every time he sticks that old tin badge on the outside of his coat he’s on the war-path.  Whip up, Hiram!”

From afar they spied the tall figure of Dependence Crymble passing wraithlike to and fro across the yard.

“Thirty days per sashay!” grunted Hiram.  “That’s the way they figger it.”

Batson Reeves would have scrambled down from the top of the woodpile when he saw Cap’n Sproul halt Crymble in his weary labor and draw him to one side.  But Hiram suggested to Mr. Reeves that he better stay up, and emphasized the suggestion by clutching a stick of stove-wood in each hand.

“Crymble,” huskily whispered the Cap’n, “I put ye here out of a good meanin’—­meanin’ to keep ye out of trouble.  But I’m afraid I’ve got ye into it.”

“I told ye what she was and all about it,” complained Mr. Crymble, bitterly.

“It ain’t ‘she,’ it’s—­it’s—­” The Cap’n saw the bobbing head of Nute’s Dobbin heaving into sight around distant alders.  “All is, you needn’t stay where I put ye.”

Mr. Crymble promptly dropped the three sticks of wood that he was carrying.

“But I don’t want you to get too far off till I think this thing over a little,” resumed the Cap’n.  “There ain’t no time now.  You ought to know this old farm of your’n pretty well.  You just go find a hole and crawl into it for a while.”