“Go down to the graveyard and get that stone of his and set it here,” replied Cap’n Sproul, with bitter sarcasm.  “Go somewhere to get out of my way here, for if you or any other human polecat, male or female”—­he directed withering glance at Mrs. Crymble—­“gets in my way whilst I’m doin’ what’s to be done, if we ain’t heathen, I’ll split ’em down with this barn shovel.”  He had secured the implement and tossed out the first shovelful.

There were plenty of willing volunteers.  They paid no attention to the widow’s reproaches.  All who could, toiled with shovels.  Others lifted the dirt in buckets.  At the end of half an hour Cap’n Sproul, who was deepest in the hole, uttered a sharp exclamation.

“By the mud-hoofed mackinaw!” he shouted, waving his shovel to command silence, “if he ain’t alive again after bein’ killed the fourth time!”

Below there was a muffled “tunk-tunk-tunk!” It was plainly the sound of two rocks clacking together.  It was appealing signal.

Ten minutes later, furious digging brought the rescuers to a flat rock, part of the stoning of the caved-in well.  In its fall it had lodged upon soil and rocks, and when it was raised, gingerly and slowly, they found that, below in the cavern it had preserved, there sat Mr. Crymble, up to his shoulders in dirt.

“If some gent will kindly pass me a chaw of tobacker,” he said, wistfully, “it will kind of keep up my strength and courage till the rest of me is dug up.”

When he had been lifted at last to the edge of the well he turned dull eyes of resentment on Mrs. Crymble.

“I wish there’d been a hole clear through to the Sandwich Isle or any other heathen country,” he said, sourly.  “I’d have crawled there through lakes of fire and seas of blood.”

She lifted her voice to vituperate, but his last clinch with death seemed to have given Mr. Crymble a new sense of power and self-reliance.  He hopped up, gathered a handful of rocks and made at his Xantippe.  His aim was not too good and he did not hit her, but he stood for several minutes and soulfully bombarded the door that she slammed behind her in her flight.

Then he came back and gathered more rocks from the scene of his recent burial.  He propped his thin legs apart, brandished a sizable missile, and squalled defiance.

“I’ve just died for the fourth time—­killed by a well cavin’ in on me.  There ain’t no hell where I’ve been.  And if there’s any man here that thinks he can shove me back into this hell on earth”—­he shook his fist at the house and singled Cap’n Sproul with flaming eye—­“now is the time for him to try to do it.”

“There ain’t nobody goin’ to try to do it,” said the Cap’n, coming up to him with frankly outstretched hand.  He patted the rocks gently from the arms of the indignant Mr. Crymble.  “As a gen’ral thing I stand up for matrimony and stand up for it firm—­but I reckon I didn’t understand your case, Crymble.  I apologize, and we’ll shake hands on it.  You can have the school-house, and I’ll do more’n that—­I’ll pay for fixin’ it over.  And in the mean time you come up to my house and make me a good long visit.”