The door opened just about wide enough to admit a cat, were that cat sufficiently slab-sided, and Mr. Gammon slid his lath-like form in edgewise.  He stood beside the door after he had shut it softly behind him.  He gazed forlornly at Cap’n Aaron Sproul, first selectman.  Outside sounded a plaintive “Squawnk!”

Cap’n Sproul at that moment had his fist up ready to spack it down into his palm to add emphasis to some particularly violent observation he was just then making to Mr. Tate, highway “surveyor” in Tumble-dick District.  Cap’n Sproul jerked his chin around over his shoulder so as to stare at Mr. Gammon, and held his fist poised in air.

“Squawnk!” repeated the plaintive voice outside.

Mr. Gammon had a head narrowed in the shape of an old-fashioned coffin, and the impression it produced was fully as doleful.  His neighbors in that remote section of Smyrna known as “Purgatory,” having the saving grace of humor, called him “Cheerful Charles.”

The glare in the Cap’n’s eyes failed to dislodge him, and the Cap’n’s mind was just then too intent on a certain topic to admit even the digression of ordering Mr. Gammon out.

“What in the name of Josephus Priest do I care what the public demands?” he continued, shoving his face toward the lowering countenance of Mr. Tate.  “I’ve built our end of the road to the town-line accordin’ to the line of survey that’s best for this town, and now if Vienny ain’t got a mind to finish their road to strike the end of our’n, then let the both of ’em yaw apart and end in the sheep-pastur’.  The public ain’t runnin’ this.  It’s me—­the first selectman.  You are takin’ orders from me—­and you want to understand it.  Don’t you nor any one else move a shovelful of dirt till I tell you to.”

Hiram Look, retired showman and steady loafer in the selectman’s office, rolled his long cigar across his lips and grunted indorsement.

“Squawnk!” The appeal outside was a bit more insistent.

Mr. Gammon sighed.  Hiram glanced his way and noted that he had a noose of clothes-line tied so tightly about his neck that his flabby dewlap was pinched.  He carried the rest of the line in a coil on his arm.

“Public says—­” Mr. Tate began to growl.

“Well, what does public say?”

“Public that has to go around six miles by crossro’ds to git into Vienny says that you wa’n’t elected to be no crowned head nor no Seizer of Rooshy!” Mr. Tate, stung by memories of the taunts flung at him as surveyor, grew angry in his turn.  “I live out there, and I have to take the brunt of it.  They think you and that old fool of a Vienny selectman that’s lettin’ a personal row ball up the bus’ness of two towns are both bedeviled.”

“She’s prob’ly got it over them, too,” enigmatically observed Mr. Gammon, in a voice as hollow as wind in a knot-hole.

This time the outside “Squawnk” was so imperious that Mr. Gammon opened the door.  In waddled the one who had been demanding admittance.