“Did you ever ride on an elephant, Cap’n Sproul?” inquired Hiram.

“Never tried it,” said the seaman.

“Well, I want you to come up here with me.  Imogene will h’ist you.  I was thinkin’, as it’s gettin’ rather dull here in the village just now”—­Hiram yawned obtrusively—­“we’d go out and join the ladies.  I reckon the company’d like to go along and set on the grass, and pee-ruse nature for a little while, and eat up what’s left in them lunch-baskets.”

Ten minutes later the Smyrna Ancients and Honorables took their departure down the street bordered by the elms.  Hiram Look and Cap’n Aaron Sproul swayed comfortably on Imogene’s broad back.  The fife-and-drum corps followed, and behind marched the champions, dragging Hecla Number One on its ruckling trucks.

Then, with the bass drums punctuating and accenting, they sang: 

   “Rip-te-hoo!  And a hip, hip, holler! 
    We’ll lick hell for a half a dollar!”

And it wasn’t till then that some bystander tore his attention away long enough to stick a ladder up the elm-tree and let Colonel Gideon Ward scrape his way despondently down.

XV

Probably Constable Zeburee Nute could not have picked out a moment more inauspicious for tackling First Selectman Aaron Sproul on business not immediately connected with the matter then in hand.

First Selectman Sproul was standing beside a granite post, pounding his fist on it with little regard to barked knuckles and uttering some perfectly awful profanity.

A man stood on the other side of the post, swearing with just as much gusto; the burden of his remarks being that he wasn’t afraid of any by-joosly old split codfish that ever came ashore—­insulting reference to Cap’n Sproul’s seafaring life.

Behind Cap’n Sproul were men with pickaxes, shovels, and hoes—­listening.

Behind the decrier of mariners were men with other shovels, hoes, and pickaxes—­listening.

The granite post marked the town line between Smyrna and Vienna.

The post was four miles or so from Smyrna village, and Constable Nute had driven out to interview the first selectman, bringing as a passenger a slim, pale young man, who was smoking cigarettes, one after the other.

They arrived right at the climax of trouble that had been brooding sullenly for a week.  In annual town-meeting Smyrna and Vienna had voted to change over the inter-urban highway so that it would skirt Rattledown Hill instead of climbing straight over it, as the fathers had laid it out in the old days for the sake of directness; forgetting that a pail bail upright is just as long as a pail bail lying horizontal.

First Selectman Sproul had ordered his men to take a certain direction with the new road in order to avoid some obstructions that would entail extra expense on the town of Smyrna.

Selectman Trufant, of Vienna, was equally as solicitous about saving expense on behalf of his own town, and refused to swing his road to meet Smyrna’s highway.  Result:  the two pieces of highway came to the town line and there stopped doggedly.  There were at least a dozen rods between the two ends.  To judge from the language that the two town officers were now exchanging across the granite post, it seemed likely that the roads would stay separated.