considered the situation for some moments.

"I got it," he declared joyfully. "Buy a phonygraft an' some blank
records an' keep sayin' that proposal just the same as you do to me.
You can hear yourself poppin' as plain as you can hear a bell buoy
ring-in'. It takes me to plan things," he added with becoming pride.

Captain Enoch went to Boston and visited his vessel, as he told
Mrs. Crowell when he returned. Also, he visited the "phonygraft man,"
a circumstance he failed to relate.

When Mapleville's express agent delivered at the Crowell home a
large bundle addressed to Captain Enoch Burgess, the captain
smuggled it surreptitiously upstairs, closed the windows of his room
and stuffed the key hole with a wad of paper.

It was some hours before he succeeded in mastering the various
adjustments of the phonograph, and ventured to hear himself
"pop." Listening with critical intentness, he discovered that two
sentences were missing. Grimly he tried again. The word that had
been so long his stumbling block suddenly showed its vindictiveness
once more.

"'It is with painful trep-trep-' darn it!" repeated the phonograph
with startling distinctness.

Wrathfully the captain snatched the record and hurled it under the
bed. A number of others soon kept it company. The next day the
captain went to Boston again. This time even the phonograph dealer
was astonished at the number of blank records Captain Enoch demanded.

With reckless abandon the captain proceeded to use the new supply of
records. Dripping with perspiration from the heat of his
closely-shut room and from his strenuous mental exertion, he finally
came to the last one, and word by word and sentence by sentence
heard himself make an absolutely correct and flawless proposal to
Miss Macy.

Solemnly the captain wiped his brow. "I declare I wish Abner could
hear it," he remarked proudly. "There ain't a single mistake, big
words an' all. It ought to please M'lissy, if anything will."

At the thought of Melissa Captain Enoch's honest heart began to beat
faster. He threw open his window with all the eagerness of a lover,
and looked over toward Melissa's old-fashioned house with its
comfortable veranda and wide chimney.

His bronzed face turned suddenly white and he gripped the window
sill with all the strength of his powerful hands. Two men were
turning in at Melissa's gate. The short fat man was Thomas Peters,
the tall thin one the village clergyman. To Captain Enoc