“Well, if it’s botherin’ your eyesight, you’d better look t’other way,” growled the Cap’n.

“Be I goin’ to raid or ain’t I goin’ to raid?” demanded Constable Nute.  “It’s for you to say!”

“Look here, Nute,” said the Cap’n, rising and aiming his forefinger at the constable’s nose as he would have levelled a bulldog revolver, “if you and them wimmen think you’re goin’ to use me as a pie-fork to lift hot dishes out of an oven that they’ve heated, you’d better leave go—­that’s all I’ve got to say.”

“You might just as well know it’s makin’ talk,” ventured the constable, taking a safer position near the door.  A queer sort of embarrassment that he noted in the Cap’n’s visage emboldened him.  “You know just as well as I do that Ferd Parrott has gone and took to sellin’ licker.  Old Branscomb is goin’ home tea-ed up reg’lar, and Al Leavitt and Pud Follansby and a half a dozen others are settin’ there all times of night, playin’ cards and makin’ a reg’lar ha’nt of it.  If Ferd ain’t shet up it will be said”—­the constable looked into the snapping eyes of the first selectman and halted apprehensively.

“It ain’t that I believe any such thing, Cap’n Sproul,” he declared at last, breaking an embarrassing silence.  “But here’s them wimmen takin’ up them San Francisco scandals to study in their Current Events Club, and when the officers here don’t act when complaint is made about a hell-hole right here in town, talk starts, and it ain’t complimentary talk, either.  Pers’n’ly, I feel like a tiger strainin’ at his chain, and I’d like orders to go ahead.”

“Tiger, hey?” remarked the Cap’n, looking him up and down.  “I knowed you reminded me of something, but I didn’t know what, before.  Now, if them wimmen—­” he began with decision, but broke off to stare through the town-office window.  Mr. Nute stepped from the door to take observation, too.

Twelve women in single file were picking their way across the mushy street piled with soft March snow.

“Reckon the Double-yer T. Double-yers is goin’ to wait on Ferd ag’in to give him his final come-uppance,” suggested the constable.  “Heard some talk of it yistiddy.”

The Smyrna tavern into which they disappeared was a huge hulk, relic of the old days when the stage-coaches made the village their headquarters.  The storms of years had washed the paint from it; it had “hogged” in the roof where the great square chimney projected its nicked bulk from among loosened bricks scattered on the shingles; and from knife-gnawed “deacon-seat” on the porch to window-blind, dangling from one hinge on the broad gable, the old structure was seedy indeed.

“I kind of pity Ferd,” mumbled the constable, his faded eyes on the cracked door that the last woman had slammed behind her.  “Hain’t averaged to put up one man a week for five years, and I reckon he’s had to sell rum or starve.”

Cap’n Sproul made no observation.  He still maintained that air of not caring to discuss the affairs of the Smyrna tavern.  He stared at the building as though he rather expected to see the sides tumble out or the roof fly up, or something of the sort.