“I don’t dast to be an outlaw, hey?” he cried, hoarsely.  “That stove is too good for me, is it?  My wife’s biskits throwed into the mud and mire!”

He lighted the fuse of the dynamite, ran to the team and popped the explosive into the stove oven and slammed the door.  Then he flew to his sack, hoisted it to his shoulder and staggered back toward the dry well.

At this critical juncture there did not arise one of those rare spirits to perform an act of noble self-sacrifice.  There have been those who have tossed spluttering bombs into the sea; who have trodden out hissing fuses.  But just then no one seemed to care for the exclusive and personal custody of that stick of dynamite.

All those in teams whipped up, yelling like madmen, and those on foot grabbed on behind and clambered over tailboards.  Cap’n Sproul, feeling safer on his own legs than in Hiram’s team, pounded away down the road with the speed of a frantic Percheron.  And in all this panic T. Taylor, only dimly realizing that there was something in his stove that was going to cause serious trouble, obeyed the exhortations screamed at him, cut away his horse, straddled the beast’s back and fled with the rest.

The last one in sight was Mrs. Luce, who had shown serious intentions of remaining on the spot as though she feared to miss anything that bore the least resemblance to the coming of the last great day.  But she suddenly obeyed her husband, who was yelling at her over the edge of the hole, and ran and fell in by his side.

Missiles that screamed overhead signalized to the scattered fugitives the utter disintegration of T. Taylor’s stove.  The hearth mowed off a crumbly chimney on the Luce house, and flying fragments crushed out sash in the windows of the abandoned main part.  Cap’n Sproul was the first one to reappear, coming from behind a distant tree.  There was a hole in the ground where T. Taylor’s wagon had stood.

“Daminite!” screamed a voice.  Mr. Luce was dancing up and down on the edge of his hole, shaking another stick of the explosive.  “I’ll show ye whuther I’m an outlaw or not!  I’ll have this town down on its knees.  I’ll show ye what it means to squdge me too fur.  I give ye fair warnin’ from now on.  I’m a desp’rit’ man.  They’ll write novels about me before I’m done.  Try to arrest me, will ye?  I’ll take the whole possy sky-hootin’ with me when ye come.”  He was drunk with power suddenly revealed to him.

He lifted the sack out of the hole and, paying no heed to some apparent expostulations of Mrs. Luce, he staggered away up the hillside into the beech growth, bowed under his burden.  And after standing and gazing for some time at the place where he disappeared, the first selectman trudged down the road to where Hiram was waiting for him, soothing his trembling horse.

“Well,” said the old showman, with a vigorous exhalation of breath to mark relief, “get in here and let’s go home.  Accordin’ to my notion, replevinin’ and outlawin’ ain’t neither sensible or fashionable or healthy.  Somethin’ that looked like a stove-cover and sounded like a howlaferinus only just missed me by about two feet.  That critter’s dangerous to be let run loose.  What are you goin’ to do about him?”