It was evident that Mr. Reeves was not prepared to state.  He maintained a stubborn silence.

Cap’n Sproul had picked up the hat with the tall feather and was gingerly revolving it in his hands.

“You’re a nice widderer, you are!” snorted Hiram.  “A man that will wear a deceased’s clothes in order to help him break up families and spread sorrow and misery round a neighborhood, would be a second husband to make a woman both proud and pleased.  Cap’n, put that hat and veil back onto him.  I’ll hold him.”

Mr. Reeves consented to stand still only after he had received a half-dozen open-handed buffets that made his head ring.

“There!” ejaculated Hiram, after the Cap’n’s unaccustomed fingers had arranged the head-gear.  “Bein’ that you’re dressed for company, we’ll make a few calls.  Grab a-holt, Cap’n.”

“I’ll die in my tracks right here, first,” squalled Reeves, guessing their purpose.  But he was helpless in their united clutch.  They rushed him up the lane, tramped along the piazza noisily, jostled through the front door, and presented him before Hiram’s astounded wife.

“Mis’ Look,” said her husband, “here’s the lady that’s in love with me, and that has been leavin’ me letters.  It bein’ the same lady that was once in love with you, I reckon you’ll appreciate my feelin’s in the matter.  There’s just one more clue that we need to clinch this thing—­and that’s another one of those letters.  The Cap’n and I don’t know how to find a pocket in a woman’s dress.  We’re holdin’ this lady.  You hunt for the pocket, Mis’ Look.”

The amazement on her comely face changed to sudden and indignant enlightenment.

“The miserable scalawag!” she cried.  The next instant, with one thrust of her hand, she had the damning evidence.  There were two letters.

“She ain’t delivered the one to darlin’ Cap’n Sproul this evenin’,” Hiram remarked, persisting still in his satiric use of the feminine pronoun.  “If you’ll put on your bonnet, Mis’ Look, we’ll all sa’nter acrost to the Cap’n’s and see that Louada Murilla gets hers.  Near’s I can find out, the rules of this special post-office is that all love-letters to us pass through our wives’ hands.”

In the presence of Mrs. Sproul, after the excitement of the dramatic entrance had subsided, the unhappy captive attempted excuses, cringing pitifully.

“I didn’t think of it all by myself,” he bleated.  “It was what the Dawn woman said, and then when I mentioned that I had some grudges agin’ the same parties she wrote the notes, and the perfessor planned the rest, so’t we could both get even.  But it wasn’t my notion.  I reckon he mesmerized me into it.  I ain’t to blame.  Them mesmerists has awful powers.”

“Ya-a-a-as, that’s probably just the way of it!” sneered Hiram, with blistering sarcasm.  “But you’ll be unmesmerized before we get done with you.  There’s nothin’ like makin’ a good job of your cure, seein’ that you was unfort’nit’ enough to get such a dose of it that it’s lasted you a week.  Grab him, Cap’n.”