VIII

Louada Murilla opened the front door when the chief constable knocked, after an exasperatingly elaborate hitching and blanketing of horses.  She staggered to the door rather than walked.  The Cap’n sat with rigid legs still extended toward the fire.

The three men filed into the room, and remained standing in solemn row.  Mr. Nute, on behalf of the delegation, refused chairs that were offered by Mrs. Sproul.  He had his own ideas as to how a committee of notification should conduct business.  He stood silent and looked at Louada Murilla steadily and severely until she realized that her absence was desired.

She tottered out of the room, her terrified eyes held in lingering thrall by the woe-stricken orbs of the Cap’n.

Constable Nute eyed the door that she closed, waiting a satisfactory lapse of time, and then cleared his throat and announced: 

“I want you to realize, Cap’n Sproul, that me and my feller constables here has been put in a sort of a hard position.  I hope you’ll consider that and govern yourself accordin’.  First of all, we’re obeyin’ orders from them as has authority.  I will say, however, that I have ideas as to how a thing ought to be handled, and my associates have agreed to leave the talkin’ to me.  I want to read you somethin’ first,” he said, fumbling at the buttons on his coat, “but that you may have some notion as to what it all points and be thinkin’ it over, I’ll give you a hint.  To a man of your understandin’, I don’t s’pose I have to say more than ‘Cincinnatus,’ That one word explains itself and our errunt.”

“I never knowed his last name,” mumbled the Cap’n, enigmatically.  “But I s’pose they’ve got it in the warrant, all right!” He was eying the hand that was seeking the constable’s inside pocket.  “I never was strong on Portygee names.  I called him Joe.”

Mr. Nute merely stared, without trying to catch the drift of this indistinct muttering.

While the Cap’n watched him in an agony of impatience and suspense, he slowly drew out a spectacle-case, settled his glasses upon his puffy nose, unfolded a sheet of paper on which a dirty newspaper clipping was pasted, and began to read: 

“More than ever before in the history of the United States of America are loyal citizens called upon to throw themselves into the breach of municipal affairs, and wrest from the hands of the guilty—­”

The ears of Cap’n Sproul, buzzing with his emotions, caught only a few words, nor grasped any part of the meaning.  But the sonorous “United States of America” chilled his blood, and the word “guilty” made his teeth chatter.

He felt an imperious need of getting out of that room for a moment—­of getting where he could think for a little while, out from under the starings of those three solemn men.

“I want to—­I want to—­” he floundered; “I would like to get on my shoes and my co’t and—­and—­I’ll be right back.  I won’t try to—­I’ll be right back, I say.”