But Captain Stitt was ready with a denial.  He claimed that the prophecy was not fulfilled and therefore all fortune telling was fraudulent.  Barzilla retorted hotly, and the argument began again.  The two were shouting at each other.  Captain Sol stood it for a while and then commanded silence.

“Stop your yellin’!” he ordered.  “What ails you fellers?  Think you can prove it better by screechin’?  They can hear you half a mile.  There’s Cornelius Rowe standin’ gawpin’ on the other side of the street this minute.  He thinks there’s a fire or a riot, one or t’other.  Let’s change the subject.  See here, Bailey, didn’t you start to tell us somethin’ last time you was in here about your ridin’ in an automobile?”

“I started to—­yes.  But nobody’d listen.  I rode in one and I sailed in one.  You see—­”

“I’m goin’ outdoor,” declared Barzilla.

“No, you’re not.  Bailey listened to you.  Now you do as much for him.  I heard a little somethin’ about the affair at the time it happened and I’d like to hear the rest of it.  How was it, Bailey?”

Captain Stitt knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“Well,” he began, “I didn’t know the critter was weak in his top riggin’ or I wouldn’t have gone with him in the fust place.  And he wa’n’t real loony, nuther.  ’Twas only when he got aboard that—­that ungodly, kerosene-smellin’, tootin’, buzzin’, Old Harry’s gocart of his that the craziness begun to show.  There’s so many of them weak-minded city folks from the Ocean House comes perusin’ ’round summers, nowadays, that I cal’lated he was just an average specimen, and never examined him close.”

“Are all the Ocean House boarders weak-minded nowadays?” asked the depot master.

Mr. Wingate answered the question.

“My land!” he snapped; “would they board at the Ocean House if they wa’n’t weak-minded?”

Captain Bailey did not deign to reply to this jibe.  He continued calmly: 

“This feller wa’n’t an Ocean Houser, though.  He was young Stumpton’s automobile skipper-shover, or shofer, or somethin’ they called him.  He answered to the hail of Billings, and his home port was the Stumpton ranch, ’way out in Montana.  He’d been here in Orham only a couple of weeks, havin’ come plumb across the United States to fetch his boss the new automobile.  You see, ’twas early October.  The Stumptons had left their summer place on the Cliff Road, and was on their way South for the winter.  Young Stumpton was up to Boston, but he was comin’ back in a couple of days, and then him and the shover was goin’ automobilin’ to Florida.  To Florida, mind you!  In that thing!  If it was me I’d buy my ticket to Tophet direct and save time and money.