On the station platform they frowned upon him, and he scowled at them.  He realized that his only chance in this desperate venture lay in getting at the elder first, and frisking him away before the women had opportunity to open their mouths.  A word from them might check operations.  And then, with the capture once made, if he could speed his horse fast enough to allow him an uninterrupted quarter of an hour at the tavern with the minister, he decided that only complete paralysis of the tongue could spoil his plan.

Hiram, with his superior bulk and his desperate eagerness, had the advantage of the women at the car-steps.  He crowded close.  It was the white-lawn tie on the first passenger who descended that did the business for Hiram.  In his mind white-lawn ties and clergymen were too intimately associated to admit of error.  He yanked away the little man’s valise, grabbed his arm, and rushed him across the platform and into the pung’s rear seat.  And the instant he had scooped the reins from the dasher he flung himself into the front seat and was away up the road, larruping his horse and ducking the snow-cakes that hurtled from the animal’s hoofs.

“Look here!  I—­I—­” gasped the little man, prodding him behind.

“It’s all right, elder!” bellowed Hiram.  “You wait till we get there and it will be made all right.  Set clus’ and hold on, that’s all now!”

“But, look here, I want to go to Smyrna tavern!”

“Good for you!” Hiram cried.  “Set clus’ and you’ll get there!” It seemed, after all, that ill repute had not spread far.  His spirits rose, and he whipped on at even better speed.

“If this isn’t life or death,” pleaded the little man, “you needn’t hurry so.”  Several “thank-you-marms” had nearly bounced him out.

“Set clus’,” advised the driver, and the little man endeavored to obey the admonition, clinging in the middle of the broad seat.

Hiram did not check speed even on the slope of the hill leading into the village, though the little man again lifted voice of fear and protest.  So tempestuous was the rush of the pung that the loafers in Broadway’s store hustled out to watch.  And they saw the runners strike the slush-submerged plank-walk leading across the square, beheld the end of the pung flip, saw the little man rise high above the seat with a fur robe in his arms and alight with a yell of mortal fright in the mushy highway, rolling over and over behind the vehicle.

Helping hands of those running from the store platform picked him up, and brought his hat, and stroked the slush out of his eyes so that he could see Hiram Look sweeping back to recover his passenger.

“You devilish, infernal jayhawk of a lunatic!” squealed the little man.  “Didn’t I warn you not to drive so fast?”

Hiram’s jaw dropped at the first blast of that irreligious outbreak.  But the white-lawn tie reassured him.  There was no time for argument.  Before those loafers was no fit place.  He grabbed up the little man, poked him into the pung, held him in with one hand and with the other drove furiously to the tavern porch.  With equal celerity he hustled him into the office.