It was pointed reference to the differences that existed in the board of selectmen, on account of Cap’n Sproul’s determination to command.

Two very indignant men rode away, leaving a perfectly furious one standing in the road shaking his fists after them.  And he was the more angry because he felt that he had been hastier with the constable than even his overwrought state of mind warranted.  Then, as he reflected on the graveyard matter, his curiosity began to get the better of his wrath, and to the surprise of his Vienna antagonist he abandoned the field without another word and started for Smyrna village with his men and dump-carts.

But dump-carts move slowly, and when the Cap’n arrived at the town house Constable Zeburee Nute was nailing up a hand-bill that announced that Professor Derolli, the celebrated hypnotist, would occupy the town hall for a week, and that he would perform the remarkable feat of burying a subject in the local graveyard for forty-eight hours, and that he would “raise this subject from the dead,” alive and well.  The ink was just dry on a permit to use the graveyard, signed by Selectmen Batson Reeves and Philias Blodgett.  The grim experiment was to wind up the professor’s engagement.  In the mean time he was to give a nightly entertainment at the hall, consisting of hypnotism and psychic readings, the latter by “that astounding occult seer and prophetess, Madame Dawn.”

Cap’n Sproul went home growling strong language, but confessing to himself that he was a little ashamed to enter into any further contest with the cigarette-smoking showman and the two men who were the Cap’n’s hated associates on the board of selectmen.

That evening neighbor Hiram Look called with Mrs. Look on their way to the village to attend the show, but Cap’n Sproul doggedly resisted their appeals that he take his wife and go along, too.  He opposed no objection, however, when Louada Murilla decided that she would accept neighbor Look’s offer of escort.

But when she came back and looked at him, and sighed, and sighed, and looked at him till bedtime, shaking her head sadly when he demanded the reason for her pensiveness, he wished he had made her stay at home.  He decided that Zeburee Nute had probably been busy with his tongue as to that boyish display of temper on the Rattledown Hill road.

Hiram Look came over early the next morning and found the Cap’n thinning beets in his garden.  The expression on the visitor’s face did not harmonize with the brightness of the sunshine.

“I don’t blame you for not goin’,” he growled.  “But if you had an idea of what they was goin’ to do to get even, I should ‘a’ most thought you’d ‘a’ tipped me off.  It would have been the part of a friend, anyway.”

The Cap’n blinked up at him in mute query.

“It ain’t ever safe to sass people that’s got the ear of the public, like reporters and show people,” proceeded Hiram, rebukingly.  “I’ve been in the show business, and I know.  They can do you, and do you plenty, and you don’t stand the show of an isuckle in a hot spider.”