that comes to tell him that he has been elected to the highest office in this town.  I ain’t got any more time to waste on cowards.  There’s one man here that ain’t afraid of his own shadder.  I call on Constable Zeburee Nute to head the committee, and take along with him Constables Wade and Swanton.  And I want to say to the voters here that it’s a nice report to go abroad from this town that we have to pick from the police force to get men with enough courage to tell a citizen that he’s been elected first selectman.  But the call has gone out for Cincinnatus, and he must be brought here.”

The moderator’s tone was decisive and his mien was stern.  Otherwise, even the doughty Constable Nute might have refused to take orders, though they were given in the face and eyes of his admiring neighbors.  He gnawed at his grizzled beard and fingered doubtfully the badge that, as chief constable of the town, he wore on the outside of his coat.

“Gents of the committee, please ’tend promptly to the duties assigned,” commanded the moderator, “and we will pass on to the next article in the town warrant.”

Mr. Nute rose slowly and marched out of the hall, the other two victims following without any especial signs of enthusiasm.

In the yard of the town house Mr. Nute faced them, and remarked: 

“I have some ideas of my own as to a genteel way of gittin’ him interested in this honor that we are about to bestow.  Has any one else ideas?”

The other two constables shook their heads gloomily.

“Then I’ll take the brunt of the talk on me and foller my ideas,” announced Mr. Nute.  “I’ve been studyin’ reform, and, furthermore, I know who Cincinnatus was!”

The three men unhitched each his own team, and drove slowly, in single file, along the mushy highway.

It was one of Cap’n Aaron Sproul’s mentally mild, mellow, and benign days, when his heart seemed to expand like a flower in the comforts of his latter-life domestic bliss.  Never had home seemed so good—­never the little flush on Louada Murilla’s cheeks so attractive in his eyes as they dwelt fondly on her.

In the night he had heard the sleet clattering against the pane and the snow slishing across the clapboards, and he had turned on his pillow with a little grunt of thankfulness.

“There’s things about dry land and the people on it that ain’t so full of plums as a sailor’s duff ought to be,” he mused, “but—­” And then he dozed off, listening to the wind.

In the morning, just for a taste of rough weather, he had put on his slicker and sea-boots and shovelled the slush off the front walk.  Then he sat down with stockinged feet held in the radiance of an open Franklin stove, and mused over some old log-books that he liked to thumb occasionally for the sake of adding new comfort to a fit of shore contentment.

This day he was taking especial interest in the log-books, for he was again collaborating with Louada Murilla in that spasmodic literary effort that she had termed: