“Ketch him,” announced the Cap’n, sturdily.

“Well,” philosophized Hiram, “smallpox is bad when it’s runnin’ round loose, but it’s a blastnation sight worse when it’s been ketched.  You’re the head of the town and I ain’t, and I ain’t presumin’ to advise, but I’d think twice before I went to runnin’ that bag o’ dynamite into close corners.  Luce ain’t no account, and no more is an old hoss-pistol, but when a hoss-pistol busts it’s a dangerous thing to be close to.  You let him alone and mebbe he’ll quiet down.”

But that prophecy did not take into account the state of mind of the new outlaw of Smyrna.

XXX

At about midnight Cap’n Sproul, snoring peaceably with wide-open mouth, snapped upright in bed with a jerk that set his teeth into his tongue and nearly dislocated his neck.  He didn’t know exactly what had happened.  He had a dizzy, dreaming feeling that he had been lifted up a few hundred feet in the air and dropped back.

“Land o’ Goshen, Aaron, what was it?” gasped his wife.  “It sounded like something blowing up!”

The hint steadied the Cap’n’s wits.  ’Twas an explosion—­that was it!  And with grim suspicion as to its cause, he pulled on his trousers and set forth to investigate.  An old barn on his premises, a storehouse for an overplus of hay and discarded farming tools, had been blown to smithereens and lay scattered about under the stars.  And as he picked his way around the ruins with a lantern, cursing the name of Luce, a far voice hailed him from the gloom of a belt of woodland:  “I ain’t an outlaw, hey?  I don’t dast to be one, hey?  You wait and see.”

About an hour later, just as the selectman was sinking into a doze, he heard another explosion, this time far in the distance—­less a sound than a jar, as of something striking a mighty blow on the earth.

“More dynamite!” he muttered, recognizing that explosive’s down-whacking characteristic.  And in the morning Hiram Look hurried across to inform him that some miscreant had blown up an empty corn-house on his premises, and that the explosion had shattered all the windows in the main barn and nearly scared Imogene, the elephant, into conniptions.  “And he came and hollered into my bedroom window that he’d show me whuther he could be an outlaw or not,” concluded the old showman.  “I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you’ve got to get him.  Instead of quietin’ down he’ll be growin’ worse.”

There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap’n Sproul called into the first selectman’s office that forenoon.  He could not tell them any news.  The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the rampage.

The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news.  They gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and take him, dynamite and all.  This news was to the effect that they had resigned.