“It’s my tame garnder,” said Mr. Gammon, apologetically.  “He was lonesome to be left outside.”

A fuzzy little cur that had been sitting between Mr. Tate’s earth-stained boots ran at the gander and yapped shrilly.  The big bird curved his neck, bristled his feathers, and hissed.

“Kick ’em out of here!” snapped the Cap’n, indignantly.

“Any man that’s soft-headed enough to have a gander followin’ him round everywhere he goes ought to have a guardeen appointed,” suggested Mr. Tate, acidulously, after he had recovered his dog and had cuffed his ears.

“My garnder is a gent side of any low-lived dog that ever gnawed carrion,” retorted Mr. Gammon, his funereal gloom lifting to show one flash of resentment.

“Look here!” sputtered the Cap’n, “this ain’t any Nat’ral History Convention.  Shut up, I tell ye, the two of you!  Now, Tate, you can up killick and set sail for home.  I’ve given you your course, and don’t you let her off one point.  You tell the public of this town, and you can stand on the town-line and holler it acrost into Vienny, that the end of that road stays right there.”

Mr. Tate, his dog under his arm, paused at the door to fling over his shoulder another muttered taunt about “bedevilment,” and disappeared.

“Now, old button on a graveyard gate, what do you want?” demanded Cap’n Sproul, running eye of great disfavor over Mr. Gammon and his faithful attendant.  He had heard various reports concerning this widower recluse of Purgatory, and was prepared to dislike him.

“I reckoned she’d prob’ly have it over you, too,” said Mr. Gammon, drearily.  “It’s like her to aim for shinin’ marks.”

Cap’n Sproul blinked at him, and then turned dubious gaze on Hiram, who leaned back against the whitewashed wall, nesting his head comfortably in his locked fingers.

“If she’s bedeviled me and bedeviled you, there ain’t no tellin’ where she’ll stop,” Mr. Gammon went on.  “And you bein’ more of a shinin’ mark, it will be worse for you.”

“Look here,” said the first selectman, squaring his elbows on the table and scowling on “Cheerful Charles,” “if you’ve come to me to get papers to commit you to the insane horsepittle, you’ve proved your case.  You needn’t say another word.  If it’s any other business, get it out of you, and then go off and take a swim with your old web-foot—­there!”

Mr. Gammon concealed any emotion that the slur provoked.  He came along to the table and tucked a paper under the Cap’n’s nose.

“There’s what Squire Alcander Reeves wrote off for me, and told me to hand it to you.  He said it would show you your duty.”

The selectman stared up at Mr. Gammon when he uttered the hateful name of Reeves.  Mr. Gammon twisted the noose on his neck so that the knot would come under his ear, and endured the stare with equanimity.

With spectacles settled on a nose that wrinkled irefully, the Cap’n perused the paper, his eyes growing bigger.  Then he looked at the blank back of the sheet, stared wildly at Mr. Gammon, and whirled to face his friend Look.