He planted one broad hand on the table and the other on his hip, and stood over the guest until the last crumb of the duff was gone, although Mr. Brackett clucked hiccups like an overfed hen.  The Cap’n felt some of his choler evaporate, indulging in this sweet act of tyranny.

Resentment came slowly into the jovial nature of meek Todd Ward Brackett.  But as he pushed away from the table he found courage to bend baleful gaze on his over-hospitable host.

“I’ve put up at a good many taverns in my life,” he said, “and I’m allus willin’ to eat my fair share of vittles, but I reckon I’ve got the right to say how much!”

“If you’re done eatin’,” snapped the Cap’n, “get along out, and don’t stay round in the way of the help.”  And Mr. Brackett retired, growling over this astonishing new insult.

He surveyed the suspended alligator gloomily, as he stuffed tobacco into his pipe.

“Better shet them jaws,” he advised, “or now that he’s crazy on the plum-duff question he’ll be jamming the rest of that stuff into you.”

“You can’t say outside that the table ain’t all right or that folks go away hungry under the new management,” remarked Hiram, endeavoring to palliate.

“New management goin’ to inorg’rate the plum-duffin’ idee as a reg’lar system?” inquired Mr. Brackett, sullenly.  “If it is, I’ll stay over to-morrow and see you operate on the new elder that’s goin’ to supply the pulpit Sunday—­pervidin’ he stays here.”

Hiram blinked his eyes inquiringly.  “New elder?” he repeated.

“Get a few elders to put up here,” suggested Mr. Brackett, venomously, “and new management might take a little cuss off’m the reppytation of this tavern.”  And the guest fell to smoking and muttering.

Even as wisdom sometimes falls from the mouths of babes, so do good ideas occasionally spring from careless sarcasm.

After Mr. Brackett had retired Hiram discussed the matter of the impending elder with Cap’n Sproul, the Cap’n not warming to the proposition.

“But I tell you if we can get that elder here,” insisted Hiram, “and explain it to him and get him to stay, he’s goin’ to look at it in the right light, if he’s got any Christian charity in him.  We’ll entertain him free, do the right thing by him, tell him the case from A to Z, and get him to handle them infernal wimmen.  Only an elder can do it.  If we don’t he may preach a sermon against us.  That’ll kill our business proposition deader’n it is now.  If he stays it will give a tone to the new management, and he can straighten the thing out for us.”

Not only did Cap’n Sproul fail to become enthusiastic, but he was so distinctly discouraging that Hiram forbore to argue, feeling his own optimistic resolution weaken under this depressing flow of cold water.

He did not broach the matter the next morning.  He left the Cap’n absorbed and busy in his domain of pots, set his jaws, took his own horse and pung, and started betimes for the railroad-station two miles away.  On the way he overtook and passed, with fine contempt for their podgy horse, a delegation from the W.T.W.’s.