“But you had told them you wouldn’t take the office—­you insisted that you were going to resign—­you said—­”

“It didn’t make any diff’runce what I said—­when I said it things was headed into the wind and all sails was drawin’ and I was on my course.  But you let some one try to plunk acrost my bows when I’m on the starboard tack, and have got right of way, well, more or less tophamper is goin’ to be carried away—­and it won’t be mine.”

“What have you done, Aaron?” she inquired with timorous solicitude.

“Canvassed this town from one end to the other and by moral suasion, the riot act, and a few other things I’ve got pledges from three-quarters of the voters that when I pass in my resignation to-morrow they’ll vote that they won’t accept it and will ask me to keep on in office for the good of Smyrna.  This town won’t get a chance to yoke me up with your brother Gid and point us out as a steer team named ‘Down and Out!’ He’s ‘Down’ but I ain’t ‘Out’ yet, not by a dam—­excuse me, Louada Murilla!  But I’ve been mixin’ into politics and talkin’ political talk.”

“And I had so hoped you were out of it,” she sighed, as she followed him to their repose.

She watched him make ready and depart for town hall the next morning without comment, but the wistful look in her eyes spoke volumes.  Cap’n Sproul was silent with the air of a man with big events fronting him.

She watched the teams jog along the highway toward the village.  She saw them returning in dusty procession later in the forenoon—­signal that the meeting was over and the voters were returning to their homes.

In order to beguile the monotony of waiting she hunted up the blank-book in which she had begun to write “The Life Story of Gallant Captain Aaron Sproul.”  She read the brief notes that she had been able to collect from him and reflected with bitterness that there was little hope of securing much more data from a man tied up with the public affairs of a town which exacted so much from its first selectman.

Upon her musings entered Cap’n Sproul, radiant, serene.  He bent and kissed her after the fashion of the days of the honeymoon.

“Whew!” he whistled, sitting down in a porch chair and gazing off across the blue hills.  “It’s good to get out of that steam and stew down in that hall.  I say, Louada Murilla, there ain’t in this whole world a much prettier view than that off acrost them hills.  It’s a good picture for a man to spend his last days lookin’ at.”

“I’m afraid you aren’t going to get much time to look at it, husband.”  She fondled her little book and there was a bit of pathos in her voice.

“Got all the time there is!”

There was a buoyancy in his tones that attracted her wondering attention.

“They wouldn’t accept that resignation,” he said with great satisfaction.  “It was unanimous.  Them yaller dogs never showed themselves.  Yes, s’r, unanimous, and a good round howl of a hurrah at that!  Ought to have been there and seen the expression on Hiram’s face!  I reckon I’ve shown him a few things in politics that will last him for an object-lesson.”