some of the sane business reasons
that guaranteed the immunity of Aholiah Luce, so long as he stuck
to petty thieving. But this international matter of the town of
Vienna seemed to the first selectman of Smyrna to be another sort
of proposition. And he surveyed the recalcitrant Mr. Luce with
malignant gaze.

"I've never seen you backed down by nobody," vouchsafed the admiring
constable, anxious to shift his own responsibility and understanding
pretty well how to do it. "I've allus said that if there was any man
could run this town the way it ought to be run you was the man to
do it."

Cap'n Sproul was not the kind to disappoint the confident flattery
of those who looked up to him. He buttoned his pea-jacket, and set
his hat firmly on his head. Mr. Luce noted these signs of belligerency
and braced his firedog legs.

"It's the meek that shall inherit, ye want to remember that!" croaked
Mrs. Luce. "And the crowned heads and the high and mighty--where will
they be then?"

"They won't be found usin' a stolen cook-stove and quotin'
Scriptur'," snorted the Cap'n in disgust.

"It ain't been stole," insisted Mr. Luce. "It was bought reg'lar,
and it can't be took away without mollywhackin' my house--and I've
got the law on my side that says you can't do it."

Cap'n Sproul was close to the banking.

"Luce," he said, savagely, "I ain't out here to-day to discuss law
p'ints nor argy doctrines of religion. You've got a stove there that
belongs to some one else, and you either pay for it or give it up.
I'm willin' to be fair and reasonable, and I'll give you fifteen
seconds to pay or tear down that door framework."

But neither alternative, nor the time allowed for acceptance, seemed
to please Mr. Luce. In sudden, weak anger at being thus cornered after
long immunity, he anathematized all authority as 'twas vested in the
first selectman of Smyrna. Several men passing in the highway held
up their horses and listened with interest.

Emboldened by his audience, spurred to desperate measures, Mr. Luce
kicked out one of his rubber boots at the advancing Cap'n. The Cap'n
promptly grasped the extended leg and yanked. Mr. Luce came off his
perch and fell on his back in the mud, and Constable Nute straddled
him instantly and held him down. With an axe that he picked up at
the dooryard woodpile, Cap'n Aaron hammered out the new door-frame,
paying no heed to Mr. Luce's threats or Mrs. Luce's maledictions.

"I don't know the law on