“What’s that?” inquired Uncle Trufant, with interest.

“An almighty good lickin’,” quoth the peacemaker.  “I ain’t a member of a fire company, and I ain’t under no word of honor not to fight.”

The two men snapped their angry eyes at each other, and Uncle Trufant turned away, intimidated for the moment.  He confessed to himself that he didn’t exactly understand how far a seafaring man could be trifled with.

Vienna gazed truculently on Smyrna for a time, but Smyrna, obeying their foreman’s adjurations, mellowed into amiable grins and went on with their lunches.

“Where’s that Spitz poodle with the blue ribbon?” inquired the Cap’n of Hiram, having reference to the brisk little man and his side whiskers.  “It don’t appear to me that you pounded it into his head solid enough about our not standin’ for Gid Ward.”

In the stress of other difficulties Hiram had forgotten the dispute that started the quarrel.

“Don’t let’s have any more argument, Hiram,” pleaded his wife.

“She’s right, Cap’n,” said the foreman.  “Standin’ up for your rights is good and proper business, but it’s a darn slippery place we’re tryin’ to stand on.  Let the old pirate referee.  We can outsquirt ’em.  He won’t dast to cheat us.  I’m goin’ to appoint you to represent Smyrna up there at the head of the stream.  Keep your eye out for a square deal.”

“I don’t know a thing about squirtin’, and I won’t get mixed in,” protested the Cap’n.  But the members of the Smyrna company crowded around him with appeals.

“There’s only this to know,” urged Hiram.  “The judges lay down sheets of brown paper and measure to the farthest drop.  All you’ve got to do is keep your eye out and see that we get our rights.  You’ll only be actin’ as a citizen of our town—­and as first selectman you can insist on our rights.  And you can do it in a gentlemanly way, accordin’ to the programme we’ve mapped out.  Peace and politeness—­that’s the motto for Smyrna.”

And in the end Cap’n Sproul allowed himself to be persuaded.

But it was scarcely persuasion that did it.

It was this plaintive remark of the foreman:  “Are you goin’ to stand by and see Gideon Ward do us, and then give you the laugh?”

Therefore the Cap’n buttoned his blue coat tightly and trudged up to where the committee was busy with the sheets of brown paper, weighting them with stones so that the July breeze could not flutter them away.

Starks, Carthage, and Salem made but passable showing.  They seemed to feel that the crowd took but little interest in them.  The listless applause that had greeted them in the parade showed that.

Then, with a howl, half-sullen, half-ferocious, Vienna trundled old Niagara to the reservoir, stuck her intake pipe deep in the water, and manned her brake-beams.  To the surprise of the onlookers her regular foreman took his station with the rest of the crew.  Uncle Brad Trufant, foreman emeritus, took command.  He climbed slowly upon her tank, braced himself against the bell-hanger, and shook his cane in the air.