“Course you do,” continued Barzilla.  “So does Sol, I guess.  Well, anyhow, Tobias and Cap’n Jonadab never did hitch.  When they was boys together at school they was always rowin’ and fightin’, and when they grew up to be thirty and courted the same girl—­ten years younger than either of ’em, she was—­twa’n’t much better.  Neither of ’em got her, as a matter of fact; she married a tin peddler named Bassett over to Hyannis.  But both cal’lated they would have won if t’other hadn’t been in the race, and consequently they loved each other with a love that passed understandin’.  Tobias had got well to do in the cranberry-raisin’ line and drove a fast horse.  Jonadab, durin’ the last prosperous year or two, had bought what he thought was some horse, likewise.  They met on the road one day last spring and trotted alongside one another for a mile.  At the end of that mile Jonadab’s craft’s jib boom was just astern of Tobias’s rudder.  Inside of that week the Cap’n had swapped his horse for one with a two-thirty record, and the next time they met Tobias was left with a beautiful, but dusty, view of Jonadab’s back hair.  So he bought a new horse.  And that was the beginnin’.

“It went along that way for twelve months.  Fust one feller’s nag would come home freighted with perspiration and glory, and then t’other’s.  One week Jonadab would be so bloated with horse pride that he couldn’t find room for his vittles, and the next he’d be out in the stable growlin’ ’cause it cost so much for hay to stuff an old hide rack that wa’n’t fit to put in a museum.  At last it got so that neither one could find a better horse on the Cape, and the two they had was practically an even match.  I begun to have hopes that the foolishness was over.  And then the tin peddler’s widow drifts in to upset the whole calabash.

“She made port at Orham fust, this Henrietta Bassett did, and the style she slung killed every female Goliath in the Orham sewin’ circle dead.  Seems her husband that was had been an inventor, as a sort of side line to peddlin’ tinware, and all to once he invented somethin’ that worked.  He made money—­nobody knew how much, though all hands had a guess—­and pretty soon afterwards he made a will and Henrietta a widow.  She’d been livin’ in New York, so she said, and had come back to revisit the scenes of her childhood.  She was a mighty well-preserved woman—­artificial preservatives, I cal’late, like some kinds of tomatter ketchup—­and her comin’ stirred Orham way down to the burnt places on the bottom of the kettle.”

“I guess I remember her, too,” put in Captain Bailey.

“Say!” queried Mr. Wingate snappishly, “do you want to tell about her?  If you do, why—­”

“Belay, both of you!” ordered the depot master.  “Heave ahead, Barzilla.”

“The news of her got over to Wellmouth, and me and Jonadab heard of it.  He was some subject to widows—­most widower men are, I guess—­but he didn’t develop no alarmin’ symptoms in this case and never even hinted that he’d like to see his old girl.  Fact is, his newest horse trade had showed that it was afraid of automobiles, and he was beginnin’ to get rabid along that line.  Then come that afternoon when him and me was out drivin’ together, and we—­Well, I’ll have to tell you about that.