“It beats all how my rheumaticks has been talkin’ up lately.  I don’t seem to have no ginger nor spirit left in me.  I reckon I got away from the sea jest in time.  I wouldn’t even dare to order a nigger to swab decks, the way I’m feelin’ now.”

“You’ve allus made a good deal of talk about how many men you’ve handled in your day,” said the Colonel, tucking a thumb under his suspender and leaning back with supercilious cock of his gray eyebrows.  “It’s bein’ hinted round town here more or less that you’re northin’ but bluff.  I don’t realize, come to think it over, how I ever come to let you git such a holt in my fam’ly.  I—­”

The two were sitting, as was their custom in those days of the Colonel’s espionage, under the big maple in the yard.  A man who was passing in the highway paused and leaned on the fence.

“Can one of you gents tell me,” he asked, “where such a lady as Miss Phar”—­he consulted a folded paper that he held in his hand—­“Pharleena Pike lives about here?”

He was an elderly man with a swollen nose, striated with purple veins.  Under his arm he carried a bundle done up in meat-paper.

There was a queer glint of excitement in the eyes of the Cap’n.  But he did not speak.  He referred the matter to Ward with a jab of his thumb.

“What do you want to know where Miss Pike lives for?” demanded the Colonel, looking the stranger over with great disfavor.

“None of your business,” replied the man of the swollen nose, promptly.  “I’ve asked a gent’s question of one I took to be a gent, and I’d like a gent’s reply.”

“You see,” said Cap’n Sproul to the stranger, with a confidential air, as though he were proposing to impart the secret of the Colonel’s acerbity, “Colonel Ward here is—­”

“You go ’long two miles, swing at the drab school-house, and go to the second white house on the left-hand side of the road!” shouted Ward, hastily breaking in on the explanation.  His thin cheeks flushed angrily.  The man shuffled on.

“Why don’t you print it on a play-card that I’m engaged to Pharlina Pike and hang it on the fence there?” the Colonel snorted, wrathfully, whirling on the Cap’n.  “Didn’t it ever occur to you that some things in this world ain’t none of your business?”

The Cap’n sighed with the resigned air that he had been displaying during the week past.

“Lemme see, where was I?” went on the Colonel, surlily.  “I was sayin’, wasn’t I, that I didn’t see how I’d let you stick yourself into this fam’ly as you’ve done?  It’s time now for you and me to git to a reck’nin’.  There’s blamed liars round here snick’rin’ in their whiskers, and sayin’ that you’ve backed me down.  Now—­”

Another man was at the fence, and interrupted with aggravating disregard of the Colonel’s intentness on the business in hand.  This stranger was short and squat, stood with his feet braced wide apart, and had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder.  His broad face wore a cheery smile.