“I’ll show you whether I can cook or not,” was the Cap’n’s proud boast to the showman when the latter bustled eagerly in from one of his trips.  He held out a smoking doughnut on a fork.  “There ain’t one woman in ten can fry ’em without ’em soakin’ fat till they’re as heavy as a sinker.”

Hiram gobbled to the last mouthful, expressing his admiration as he ate, and the Cap’n glowed under the praise.

His especial moment of triumph came when his wife and Mrs. Look, adventuring to seek their truant husbands, sat for a little while in the tavern kitchen and ate a doughnut, and added their astonished indorsement.  In the flush of his masterfulness he would not permit them to lay finger on dish, pot, or pan.

Hiram served as waiter to the lonely guest in the dining-room, and was the bearer of several messages of commendation that seemed to anger the Cap’n as much as other praise gratified him.

“Me standin’ here cookin’ for that sculpin!” he kept growling.

However, he ladled out an especially generous portion of plum-duff—­the climax of his culinary art—­and to his wrathful astonishment Hiram brought it back untasted.

“Mebbe it’s all right,” he said, apologetically, “but he was filled full, and he said it was a new dish to him and didn’t look very good, and—­”

The Cap’n grabbed the disparaged plum-duff with an oath and started for the dining-room.

“Hold on!” Hiram expostulated; “you’ve got to remember that he’s a guest, Cap.  He’s—­”

“He’s goin’ to eat what I give him, after I’ve been to all the trouble,” roared the old skipper.

Mr. Brackett was before the fire in the office, hiccuping with repletion and stuffing tobacco into the bowl of his clay pipe.

“Anything the matter with that duff?” demanded the irate cook, pushing the dish under Mr. Brackett’s retreating nose.  “Think I don’t know how to make plum-duff—­me that’s sailed the sea for thutty-five years?”

“Never made no such remarks on your cookin’,” declared the guest, clearing his husky throat in which the food seemed to be sticking.

“Hain’t got no fault to find with that plum-duff?”

“Not a mite,” agreed Mr. Brackett, heartily.

“Then you come back out here to the table and eat it.  You ain’t goin’ to slander none of my vittles that I’ve took as much trouble with as I have with this.”

“But I’m full up—­chock!” pleaded Mr. Brackett.  “I wisht I’d have saved room.  I reckon it’s good.  But I ain’t carin’ for it.”

“You’ll come out and eat that duff if I have to stuff it down your thro’t with the butt of your hoss-whip,” said the Cap’n with an iciness that was terrifying.  He grabbed the little man by the collar and dragged him toward the dining-room, balancing the dish in the other hand.

“I’ll bust,” wailed Mr. Brackett.

“Well, that bump will make a little room,” remarked Cap’n Sproul, jouncing him down into a chair.