“I am looking for the residence of Miss Pharlina Pike,” he announced, with a precise puckering of his lips.  “I’ll thank you for a word of direction.  But I want to say, as a lowly follower of the Lord—­in evangelical lines—­that it is not seemly for two men to quarrel in public.”

Ward had been gaping at him in amazement.

“I can tell ye right now,” he cried, “that Miss Pharline Pike ain’t hirin’ no farm-hand that wears a plug-hat!  There ain’t no need of your goin’ to her place.”

“My dear sir,” smiled the decayed gentleman, “it is a delicate matter not to be canvassed in public; but I can assure you that I shall not remain with Miss Pike as a menial or a bond-servant.  Oh no!  Not by any means, sir!”

Ward scruffed his hand over his forehead, blinking with puzzled astonishment.

“I’ll thank you for the directions,” said the stranger.  “They were not able to give me exact instructions at the village—­at least, I cannot remember them.”

“I ain’t no dadfired guide-board to stand here all day and p’int the way to Pharline Pike’s,” roared Ward, with a heat that astonished the decayed gentleman.

“I don’t want no elder to go away from this place and report that he wa’n’t used respectful,” said Sproul, meekly, addressing the stranger.  “You’ll have to excuse Colonel Ward here.  P’r’aps I can say for him, as a pertickler friend, what it wouldn’t be modest for him to say himself.  The fact is, he’s en—­”

The infuriated Ward leaped up and down on the sward and shrieked the road instructions to the wayfarer, who hustled away, casting apprehensive glances over his shoulder.

But when the Colonel turned again on the Cap’n, the latter rose and hobbled with extravagant limpings toward the house.

“I don’t reckon I can stay out here and pass talk with you, brother-in-law,” he called back, reproachfully.  “Strangers, passin’ as they be, don’t like to hear no such language as you’re usin’.  Jest think of what that elder said!”

Ward planted himself upon a garden chair, and gazed down the road in the direction in which the strangers had gone.  He seemed to be thinking deeply, and the Cap’n watched him from behind one of the front-room curtains.

Two more men passed up the road.  At the first, the Colonel flourished his arms and indulged in violent language, the gist of which the Cap’n did not catch.  He ran to the fence when the second accosted him, tore off a picket, and flung it after the fleeing man.

Then he sat down and pondered more deeply still.

He cast occasional glances toward the house, and once or twice arose as though to come in.  But he sat down and continued to gaze in the direction of Pharlina Pike’s house.

It was late in the afternoon when a woman came hurrying down the slope through the maple-sugar grove.  The Cap’n, at his curtain with his keen sea eye, saw her first.  He had been expecting her arrival.  He knew her in the distance for Pharlina Pike, and realized that she had come hot-foot across lots.