“I don’t know the law on it, nor I don’t care,” he muttered between his teeth as he toiled.  “All I know is, that stove belongs to T. Taylor, of Vienny, and he’s goin’ to have it.”

And when the new boarding lay around him in splinters and the door was wide once more, he led the way into the kitchen.

“You undertake to throw that hot water on me, Mis’ Luce,” he declared, noting what her fury was prompting, “and you’ll go right up through that roof, and it won’t be no millennium that will boost you, either.”

The stove man and Hiram followed him in and the disinterested onlookers came, too, curiosity impelling them.  And as they were Smyrna farmers who had suffered various and aggravating depredations by this same Aholiah Luce, they were willing to lend a hand even to lug out a hot stove.  The refulgent monarch of the kitchen departed, with the tin of biscuit still browning in its interior, passed close to the cursing Mr. Luce, lying on his back under Nute’s boring knee, and then with a lusty “Hop-ho!  All together!” went into T. Taylor’s wagon.

Mr. Luce, freed now as one innocuous, leaped up and down in a perfect ecstasy of fury.  “You’ve squdged me too fur.  You’ve done it at last!” he screamed, with hysteric iteration.  “You’ve made me a desp’rit’ outlaw.”

“Outlaw!  You’re only a cheap sneak-thief!”

“That’s right, Cap’n Sproul,” remarked the constable.  “He can’t even steal hens till it’s dark and they can’t look at him.  If they turned and put their eye on him he wouldn’t dare to touch ’em.”

“I don’t dast to be an outlaw, hey?” shrieked Mr. Luce.  The vast injury that had been done him, this ruthless assault on his house, his humiliation in public, and now these wanton taunts, whipped his weak nature into frenzy.  Cowards at bay are the savagest foes.  Mr. Luce ran amuck!

Spurring his resolution by howling over and over:  “I don’t dast to be an outlaw, hey?  I’ll show ye!” he hastened with a queer sort of stiff-legged gallop into the field, tore away some boarding, and descended into what was evidently a hiding-place, a dry well.  A moment, and up he popped, boosting a burden.  He slung it over his shoulder and started toward them, staggering under its weight.  It was a huge sack, with something in it that sagged heavily.

“Nice sort of an outlaw he’ll make—­that woodchuck!” observed Constable Nute with a cackle of mirth.

The first selectman and his supporters surveyed the approach of the furious Mr. Luce with great complacency.  If Mr. Luce had emerged with a shot-gun in his fist and a knife in his teeth he might have presented some semblance of an outlaw.  But this bow-legged man with a sack certainly did not seem savage.  Hiram offered the humorous suggestion that perhaps Mr. Luce proposed to restore property, and thereby causing people to fall dead with astonishment would get his revenge on society.

“I warned ye and you wouldn’t listen,” screamed the self-declared pariah.  “I said there was such a thing as squdgin’ me too fur.  Ye didn’t believe it.  Now mebbe ye’ll believe that!”