he shouted, hailing certain faces
that he saw peering at him. "It was your seleckman that done it--and
a seleckman acts for a town. I reckon I shall do some more blowin'
up."

He calmly walked away up the street, passing Cap'n Sproul, who stood
at one side.

"I don't dast to be an outlaw, hey?" jeered Mr. Luce.

"You don't dare to set down that sack," roared the selectman. "I'll
pay ye five hundred dollars to set down that sack and step out there
into the middle of that square--and I call on all here as witnesses
to that offer," he cried, noting that citizens were beginning to
creep back into sight once more. "Five hundred dollars for you, you
bow-legged hen-thief! You sculpin-mouthed hyena, blowing up men's
property!"

"Hold on," counselled Mr. Luce. "You're goin' to squdgin' me ag'in.
I've been sassed enough in this town. I'm goin' to be treated with
respect after this if I have to blow up ev'ry buildin' in it."

"It ain't safe to go to pokin' him up," advised Mr. Nute from afar.
"I should think you'd 'a' found that out by this time, Cap'n Sproul."

"I've found out that what ain't cowards here are thieves,'" roared
the Cap'n, beside himself, ashamed, enraged at his impotence before
this boastful fool and his grim bulwark. His impulse was to cast
caution to the winds and rush upon Luce. But reflection told him that,
in this flush of his childish resentment and new prominence, Luce
was capable of anything. Therefore he prudently held to the side of
the road.

"The next time I come into this village," said Mr. Luce, "I don't
propose to be called names in public by any old salt hake that has
pounded his dollars out of unfort'nit' sailors with belayin'-pins.
I know your record, and I ain't afeard of you!"

"There'll be worse things happen to you than to be called names."

"Oh, there will, hey?" inquired Mr. Luce, his weak passion flaming.
"Well, lemme give you jest one hint that it ain't safe to squdge me
too fur!"

He walked back a little way, lighted the fuse of the stick of dynamite
that he carried, and in spite of horrified appeals to him, cast over
the shoulders of fleeing citizens, he tossed the wicked explosive
into the middle of the square and ran.

In the words of Mr. Snell, when he came out from behind the
watering-trough: "It was a corn-cracker!"

A half-hour later Mr. Nute, after sadly completing a canvass of the
situation, headed a delegation that visited Cap'n Sproul in the
selectman's offic