He demanded information and sneered when it was not given.

It was an unfortunate attitude to take toward men, the triggers of whose tempers had been cocked by such events as had beset Hiram Look and Aaron Sproul.  Taking it that the constable was trying to pry into their business in order to regale the public on their misfortunes, Hiram threw a town-ledger at him, and the Cap’n kicked at him as he fled through the door of the office.

That night each was met at the front door by hysterics, and a third letter.  The mystery was becoming eerie.

“Dang rabbit her miserable pelt!” growled Hiram at the despairing morning conference under the poplars.  “She must be livin’ in a hole round here, or else come in a balloon.  I tell you, Cap’n Sproul, it’s got to be stopped some way or the two families will be in the lunatic asylum inside of a week.”

“Or more prob’ly in the divorce court.  Louada Murilla vows and declares she’ll get a bill if I don’t tell her the truth, and when you’ve told the truth once and sworn to it, and it don’t stick, what kind of a show is a lie goin’ to stand, when a man ain’t much of a liar?”

“If she’s goin’ to be caught we’ve got to catch her,” insisted Hiram.  “She’s crazy, or else she wouldn’t be watchin’ for us to leave the house so as to grab in and toss one of them letters.  Looks to me it’s just revenge, and to make trouble.  The darned fool can’t marry both of us.  I didn’t sleep last night—­not with that woman of mine settin’ and boohooin’.  I just set and thought.  And the result of the thinkin’ is that we’ll take our valises to-day and march to the railroad-station in the face and eyes of everybody so that it will get spread round that we’ve gone.  And we’ll come back by team from some place down the line, and lay low either round your premises or mine and ketch that infernal, frowzle-headed sister of Jim the Penman by the hind leg and snap her blasted head off.”

“What be you goin’ to tell the wimmen?”

“Tell ’em northin’.”

“There’ll be the devil to pay.  They’ll think we’re elopin’.”

“Well, let ’em think,” said Hiram, stubbornly.  “They can’t do any harder thinkin’ than I’ve been thinkin’, and they can’t get a divorce in one night.  When we ketch that woman we can preach a sermon to ’em with a text, and she’ll be the text.”

Cap’n Sproul sighed and went for his valise.

“What she said to me as I come away curled the leaves in the front yard,” confided Hiram, as they walked together down the road.

“Ditto and the same,” mourned the Cap’n.

At dusk that evening they dismounted from a Vienna livery-hitch on a back road in Smyrna, paid the driver and dismissed the team, and started briskly through the pastures across lots toward Hiram Look’s farm.

An hour later, moving with the stealth of red Indians, they posted themselves behind the stone wall opposite the lane leading into the Look dooryard.  They squatted there breathing stertorously, their eyes goggling into the night.