The Cap’n, with vision trained by vigils at sea, was the first to see the dim shape approaching.  When she had come nearer they saw a tall feather nodding against the dim sky.

“Let’s get her before she throws the letter—­get her with the goods on her!” breathed Hiram, huskily.  And when she was opposite they leaped the stone wall.

She had seasonable alarm, for several big stones rolled off the wall’s top.  And she turned and ran down the road with the two men pounding along fiercely in pursuit.

“My Gawd!” gasped Aaron, after a dozen rods; “talk about—­gayzelles—­she’s—­she’s—­”

He didn’t finish the sentence, preferring to save his breath.

But skirts are an awkward encumbrance in a sprinting match.  Hiram, with longer legs than the pudgy Cap’n, drew ahead and overhauled the fugitive foot by foot.  And at sound of his footsteps behind her, and his hoarse grunt, “I’ve got ye!” she whirled and, before the amazed showman could protect himself, she struck out and knocked him flat on his back.  But when she turned again to run she stepped on her skirt, staggered forward dizzily, and fell in a heap.  The next instant the Cap’n tripped over Hiram, tumbled heavily, rolled over twice, and brought up against the prostrate fugitive, whom he clutched in a grasp there was no breaking.

“Don’t let her hit ye,” howled Hiram, struggling up.  “She’s got an arm like a mule’s hind leg.”

“And whiskers like a goat!” bawled the Cap’n, choking in utter astonishment.  “Strike a match and let’s see what kind of a blamenation catfish this is, anyhow.”

And a moment later, the Cap’n’s knees still on the writhing figure, they beheld, under the torn veil, by the glimmer of the match, the convulsed features of Batson Reeves, second selectman of the town of Smyrna.

“Well, marm,” remarked Hiram, after a full thirty seconds of amazed survey, “you’ve sartinly picked out a starry night for a ramble.”

Mr. Reeves seemed to have no language for reply except some shocking oaths.

“That ain’t very lady-like talk,” protested Look, lighting another match that he might gloat still further.  “You ought to remember that you’re in the presence of your two ‘darlin’s.’  We can’t love any one that cusses.  You’ll be smokin’ a pipe or chawin’ tobacker next.”  He chuckled, and then his voice grew hard.  “Stop your wigglin’, you blasted, livin’ scarecrow, or I’ll split your head with a rock, and this town will call it good reddance.  Roll him over onto his face, Cap’n Sproul.”

A generous strip of skirt, torn off by Reeves’s boot, lay on the ground.  Hiram seized it and bound the captive’s arms behind his back.  “Now let him up, Cap,” he commanded, and the two men helped the unhappy selectman to his feet.

“So it’s you, hey?” growled Hiram, facing him.  “Because I’ve come here to this town and found a good woman and married her, and saved her from bein’ fooled into marryin’ a skunk like you, you’ve put up this job, hey?  Because Cap’n Sproul has put you where you belong in town business, you’re tryin’ to do him, too, hey?  What do you reckon we’re goin’ to do with you?”