“Aforesaid brave and intrepid sailor seems to have had his brain turned by his wonderful success as a mermaid capturer,” he grated. “It--it’s----” he choked and paused. “It’s too bad!” he managed to growl at last, and then snatched the reins from Peak’s hands and drove off up the alley at a stiff pace, leaving a very much mystified crowd behind him. “We’ll get out of this place as soon as pullin’ the braid and pushin’ the webbin’ will do it,” he said to Peak as the van turned into the dingy shore street of Square Harbour. “Ev’ry one here has got eyes hung out on their cheeks like lobsters have,” he went on, glowering at the people on the sidewalks. His amiability had departed suddenly. “What ye goin’ to do to old Tarfinger?” asked Peak, who fully understood what the showman was thinking about. “It’s goin’ to take a good deal of prayer and meditation to plan it out, Sime,” replied Hiram, slowly and menacingly. “Do you think that many of them critters that stood round there knew who I was?” “Ain’t your name on this cart bigger’n a fat woman sign on a side-show banner?” Hiram ground his teeth. “There was a man kicked me once,” he related slowly, “and there wasn’t no outsiders see him do it, either. And that man--but I ain’t any hand to brag, Sime. All I say is that such a case as this needs prayer and meditation, and a lot of it.” They rode on in silence. There was no sound from within. “We’ll stop up-country at some farmer’s place and bait,” said Hiram at last, “and we’ll get into Palermo after dark. The invisible lady trick will be played all right and there’s that much to say, but--I never was kicked before in the face and eyes of a public audience, to have it talked about from Clew to Erie and laughed over, and him get away! Oh, it ain’t no common case, Sime. Don’t talk to me. Let me meditate.” Therefore the ride along the highway that swept up around the broad Inlet was one devoted wholly to introspection, both without and within the rumbling van. CHAPTER XIV--THE PACT OF “ORPHAN HILL” AND THE DIVAGATIONS OF DISCONSOLATE IMOGENE “I’ tell you ’bout that, mare of mine--the more you holler ‘whoa!’ I’ve taught the whelp to clench her teeth and h’ist her tail and go! And when we got clus’ down to Clark’s, I thought for jest a sell, I’d make believe we’d run away. So I began to yell, And old man Pease he hugged his knees and gaffled to his pail, And now, my boy, purraps you think that turn-out didn’t sail! ” --“Narrative of Bart of Brighton. In the mid-afternoon Hiram checked his weary horses on the swell of a hill that overlooked a placid reach of farms. “I guess we’ll stop and provender up at that first house, there, Sime,” he stated. “I’m ’bout starved, and I reckon the plugs are, too. You hold the reins a minute whilst I lay down a little law to the invisible lady.”