“And in the midst of the performance Sim Phinney leans over to me with the most heavenly, resigned expression on his face, and says he: 

“‘It ain’t our fault, Hiram.  We promised not to interfere.’”

“What did Sam Holden and his wife say when they got home?” asked Captain Sol, when the triumphant whoops over Archibald’s righteous chastisement had subsided.

“We didn’t give him much of a chance to say anything.  I laid for him in the hall when he arrived and told him that Phinney had got a telegram and must leave immediate.  He wanted to know why, and a whole lot more, but I told him we’d write it.  Neither Sim nor me cared to face Cousin Harriet after her darlin’ son had spun his yarn.  Ha! ha!  I’d like to have seen her face—­from a safe distance.”

Captain Bailey Stitt cleared his throat.  “Referrin’ to them automobiles,” he said, “I—­”

“Say, Sol,” interrupted Wingate, “did I ever tell you of Cap’n Jonadab’s and my gettin’ took up by the police when we was in New York?”

“No,” replied the astounded depot master.  “Took up by the police?”

“Um—­hm.  Surprises you, don’t it?  Well, that whole trip was a surprise to me.

“When Laban Thorp set out to thrash his son and the boy licked him instead, they found the old man settin’ in the barnyard, holdin’ on to his nose and grinnin’ for pure joy.

“‘Hurt?’ says he.  ’Why, some.  But think of it!  Only think of it!  I didn’t believe Bill had it in him.’

“Well, that’s the way I felt when Cap’n Jonadab sprung the New York plan on to me.  I was pretty nigh as much surprised as Labe.  The idea of a man with a chronic case of lockjaw of the pocketbook, same as Jonadab had worried along under ever sence I knew him, suddenly breakin’ loose with a notion to go to New York on a pleasure cruise!  ’Twas too many for me.  I set and looked at him.

“‘Oh, I mean it, Barzilla,’ he says.  ’I ain’t been to New York sence I was mate on the Emma Snow, and that was ’way back in the eighties.  That is, to stop I ain’t.  That time we went through on the way to Peter T.’s weddin’ don’t count, ’cause we only went in the front door and out the back, like Squealer Wixon went through high school.  Let’s you and me go and stay two or three days and have a real high old time,’ says he.

“I fetched a long breath.  ‘Jonadab,’ I says, don’t scare a feller this way; I’ve got a weak heart.  If you’re goin’ to start in and be divilish in your old age, why, do it kind of gradual.  Let’s go over to the billiard room and have a bottle of sass’parilla and a five-cent cigar, just to break the ice.’

“But that only made him mad.

“‘You talk like a fish,’ he says.  ’I mean it.  Why can’t we go?  It’s September, the Old Home House is shut up for the season, you and me’s done well—­fur’s profits are concerned—­and we ought to have a change, anyway.  We’ve got to stay here in Orham all winter.’