“We’ve talked it over,” averred Lycurgus Snell, acting as spokesman, “and we can’t figger any good and reeliable way of gittin’ him without him gittin’ us, if he’s so minded, all in one tableau, same to be observed with smoked glasses like an eclipse.  No, s’r, we ain’t in any way disposed to taller the heavens nor furnish mince-meat funerals.  And if we don’t git him, and he knows we’re takin’ action agin’ him, he’ll come round and blow our barns up—­and we ain’t so well able to stand the loss as you and Mr. Look be.”

“Well, if you ain’t about the nearest to knot-holes with the rims gone off’m ’em of anything I ever see,” declared the Cap’n, with fury, “may I be used for oakum to calk a guano gunlow!”

“If you think it’s a job to set any man to, you’d better go and do it yourself,” retorted Snell, bridling.  “You know as well as I do, s’leckman, that so long as ’Liah has been let alone he’s only been a plain thief, and we’ve got along with him here in town all right—­onpleasant and somewhat expensive, like potater-bugs.  But you seem to have gone to pushin’ him and have turned him from potater-bug into a royal Peeruvian tiger, or words to that effect, and I don’t see any way but what you’ll have to tame him yourself.  There’s feelin’ in town that way, and people are scart, and citizens ain’t at all pleased with your pokin’ him up, when all was quiet.”

“Citizens ruther have it said, hey, that we are supportin’ a land-pirut here in this town, and let him disgrace us even over in Vienny?” demanded the Cap’n.

“Which was wuss?” inquired Mr. Snell, serenely.  “As it was or as it is?”

Then the ex-constables, driven forth with contumely, went across to the platform of Broadway’s store, and discussed the situation with other citizens, finding the opinion quite unanimous that Cap’n Sproul possessed too short a temper to handle delicate matters with diplomacy.  And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken into account.

To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street, with that ominous sack on his shoulder.

“Be I an outlaw, or ain’t I?” he shouted over and over, raising a clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap’n out of the town house.  “Arrest me, will ye?  When ye try it there won’t be nothin’ left of this town but a hole and some hollerin’.”

He walked right upon the store platform and into the store, and every one fled before him.  Broadway cowered behind his counter.

“Put me up a fig o’ tobacker, a pound of tea, quart o’ merlasses, ten pounds of crackers, hunk o’ pork, and two cans of them salmons,” he ordered.

In past years Mr. Luce had always slunk into Broadway’s store apologetically, a store-bill everlastingly unpaid oppressing his spirits.  Now he bellowed autocratic command, and his soul swelled when he saw Broadway timorously hastening to obey.