“Yes, yes!  But never mind that.  Where can I get a horse?  I’ve got to be in Trumet by eight to-night sure.”

“Trumet?  Why, that’s where Gertie is, ain’t it?”

“Look a-here, Jake,” broke in the livery-stable keeper.  “I’ll tell you how ’tis.  Oh, it’s all right, Sam!  Jake knows the most of it; I told him.  He can keep his mouth shut, and he don’t like old crank Higgins any better’n you and me do.  Jake, Sam here and Gertie had fixed it up to run off and git married to-night.  He was to pretend to start for Boston this mornin’.  Bought a ticket and all, so’s to throw Beriah off the scent.  He was to get off the train here at Denboro and I was to let him have a horse ‘n’ buggy.  Then, this afternoon, he was goin’ to drive through the wood roads around to Trumet and be at the Baptist Church there at eight to-night sharp.  Gertie’s Aunt Hannah, she’s had her orders, and bein’ as big a crank as her brother, she don’t let the girl out of her sight.  But there’s a fair at the church and Auntie’s tendin’ a table.  Gertie, she steps out to the cloak room to git a handkerchief which she’s forgot; see?  And she hops into Sam’s buggy and away they go to the minister’s.  After they’re once hitched Old Dyspepsy can go to pot and see the kittle bile.”

“Bully!  By gum, that’s fine!  Won’t Beriah rip some, hey?”

“Yes, but there’s the dickens to pay.  I’ve only got two horses in the stable to-day.  The rest are let.  And the two I’ve got—­one’s old Bill, and he couldn’t go twenty mile to save his hide.  And t’other’s the gray mare, and blamed if she didn’t git cast last night and use up her off hind leg so’s she can’t step.  And Sam’s got to have a horse.  Where can I git one?”

“Hum!  Have you tried Haynes’s?”

“Yes, yes!  And Lathrop’s and Eldredge’s.  Can’t git a team for love nor money.”

“Sho!  And he can’t go by train?”

“What?  With Beriah postmaster at East Harniss and always nosin’ through every train that stops there?  You can’t fetch Trumet by train without stoppin’ at East Harniss and—­What was that?”

“I don’t know.  What was it?”

“Sounded like somethin’ outside that back winder.”

The two ran to the window and looked out.  All they saw was an overturned sawhorse and two or three hens scratching vigorously.

“Guess ’twas the chickens, most likely,” observed the blacksmith.  Then, striking his blackened palms together, he exclaimed: 

“By time!  I’ve thought of somethin’!  Is McKay is in town to-day.  Come over in the Lady May.  She’s a gasoline boat.  Is would take Sam to Trumet for two or three dollars, I’ll bet.  And he’s such a fool head that he wouldn’t ask questions nor suspicion nothin’.  ’Twould be faster’n a horse and enough sight less risky.”

And just then the “fool head,” his brain whirling under its carroty thatch, was hurrying blindly up the main street, bound somewhere, he wasn’t certain where.