“What be ye goin’ to do now?” quavered Reeves.

“Take you down into the village square, and, as foreman of the Ancient and Honer’ble Firemen’s Association, I’ll ring the bell and call out the department, stand you up in front of them all in your flounces fine, and tell ’em what you’ve been doin’ to their chief.  I guess all the heavy work of gettin’ even with you will be taken off’m my hands after that.”

Reeves groaned.

“As first selectman,” broke in the Cap’n, “and interested in keepin’ bad characters out of town, I shall suggest that they take and ride you into Vienny on a rail.”

“With my fife and drum corps ahead,” shouted Hiram, warming to the possibilities.

“I’ll die here in my tracks first!” roared the captive.

“It’s kind of apparent that Madame Dawn didn’t give you lessons in prophesyin’, along with the rest of her instruction,” remarked Hiram.  “That makes twice this evenin’ that you’ve said you were goin’ to die, and you’re still lookin’ healthy.  Come along!  Look happy, for you’re goin’ to be queen of the May, mother!”

But when they started to drag him from the room both women interposed.

“Hiram, dear,” pleaded his wife, “please let the man go.  Louada Murilla and I know now what a scalawag he is, and we know how we’ve misjudged both you and Cap’n Sproul, and we’ll spend the rest of our lives showin’ you that we’re sorry.  But let him go!  If you make any such uproar as you’re talkin’ of it will all come out that he made your wives believe that you were bad men.  It will shame us to death, Hiram.  Please let him go.”

“Please let him go, Aaron,” urged Mrs. Sproul, with all the fervor of her feelings.  “It will punish him worst if you drop him here and now, like a snake that you’ve picked up by mistake.”

Cap’n Sproul and Hiram Look stared at each other a long time, meditating.  They went apart and mumbled in colloquy.  Then the Cap’n trudged to his front door, opened it, and held it open.  Hiram cut the strip that bound their captive’s wrists.

The second selectman had not the courage to raise his eyes to meet the stares directed on him.  With head bowed and the tall feather nodding over his face he slunk out into the night.  And Hiram and the Cap’n called after him in jovial chorus: 

“Good-night, marm!”

“This settling down in life seems to be more or less of a complicated performance,” observed Cap’n Sproul when the four of them were alone, “but just at this minute I feel pretty well settled.  I reckon I’ve impressed it on a few disturbers in this town that I’m the sort of a man that’s better left alone.  It looks to me like a long, calm spell of weather ahead.”

XVII

Mr. Gammon’s entrance into the office of the first selectman of Smyrna was unobtrusive.  In fact, to employ a paradox, it was so unobtrusive as to be almost spectacular.