Constable Nute, unable to cope with the problem, had driven to Smyrna village and summoned the first selectman, and the Cap’n had solicited Hiram Look to transport him, never having conquered his sailor’s fear of a horse.

“It ain’t goin’ to be twitted abroad in Vienny nor any other town that we let you steal from outsiders in any such way as this,” declared the first selectman, once on the ground.  “Folks has allus cal’lated on your stealin’ about so much here in town in the run of a year, and haven’t made no great fuss about it.  But we ain’t goin’ to harbor and protect any general Red Rover and have it slurred against this town.  Take down that scantlin’ stuff and let this man have his stove.”

“You can squdge me only so fur and no furder,” asserted Luce, sullenly, holding down his loose upper lip with his yellow teeth as though to keep it from flapping in the wind.  Within the mansion there was the mellow rasp of a tin of biscuit on an oven floor, the slam of an oven door, and Mrs. Luce appeared dusting flour from her hands.  All who knew Mrs. Luce knew that she was a persistent and insistent exponent of the belief of the Millerites—­“Go-uppers,” they called the sect in Smyrna.

“I say you’ve got to open up and give this man his property,” cried Cap’n Sproul, advancing on them.

“Property?  Who talks of property?” demanded Mrs. Luce, her voice hollow with the hollowness of the prophet.  “No one knows the day and the hour when we are to be swept up.  It is near at hand.  We shall ride triumphant to the skies.  And will any one think of property and the vain things of this world then?”

“Prob’ly not,” agreed the Cap’n, sarcastically, “and there won’t be any need of a cook-stove in the place where your husband will fetch up.  He can do all his cookin’ on a toastin’-fork over an open fire—­there’ll be plenty of blaze.”

“Don’t squdge me too fur,” repeated Mr. Luce, clinging to the most expressive warning he could muster just then.

“It’s full time for that critter to be fetched up with a round turn,” muttered Constable Nute, coming close to the elbow of the first selectman, where the latter stood glowering on the culprit.  “I reckon you don’t know as much about him as I do.  When his mother was nussin’ him, a helpless babe, he’d take the pins out’n her hair, and they didn’t think it was anything but playin’.  Once he stole the specs off’m her head whilst she was nappin’ with him in her arms, and jammed ’em down a hole in the back of the rockin’-chair.  Whilst old Doc Burns was vaccinatin’ him—­and he wa’n’t more’n tew years old—­he got Doc’s watch.”

“Those things would kind of give you a notion he’d steal, give him a fair chance,” commented Hiram, dryly.

“He’s stole ever since—­everything from carpet tacks to a load of hay,” snapped the constable, “till folks don’t stop to think he’s stealin’.  He’s got to be like rats and hossflies and other pests—­you cuss ’em, but you reckon they’ve come to stay.”