The two men stared away up the hillock and across the field to the fence that bordered it. There was no need of asking the woman the course of the parade. A huge gap in the fence and torn bushes in the adjacent woodlot marked the route. “I consider that a man that introduces el’phunts into a quiet country neighbourhood is worse than he would be if he put damanite bumbs under folks’ houses,” sputtered the woman. “You just shut your mouth for a minute and let me think, will ye?” roared Hiram. “Sime,” he went on after a little reflection, “you’ve got to go along with the--the----” He saw the woman’s eyes fixed on him inquisitively and he checked himself. “You deliver the goods,” he directed, “right to Phin and he’ll do the rest. Get along just as soon as the horses are baited and don’t forget the lunch for the--the gayzelle,” he added for the benefit of the curious woman. “I’ll take my grub in my hand and chase up Imogene. There’s no knowin’ what them farmers will da with her if I don’t. Here’s a two-dollar bill,” he said hastily to the woman. “That’s lib’ral pay for three lunches and hoss-baitin’.” “I never heard of gay-zelles eatin’ lunch,” she said, suspicion in her tones. “I s’pose you’ve got a wild man o’ Borneo in that cart to let loose on us next.” “It’s no matter what we’ve got,” retorted Hiram. “You give me my grub in my hand and let me get away.” He went stamping into the kitchen and she foh lowed him with some apprehension. Five minutes later he trotted at his best gait across the field along the trail of Imogene and her pursuers, munching ham sandwiches and scattering crumbs upon the breeze. A stern chase is always a long one, and after Hiram had crossed the woodlot he found himself on a parallel road where there were still other indignant women and clamorous farmers to shake off when they hailed him as the presumptive owner of the fugitive elephant and sought to collect damages. “A Kansas cyclone is a kitten beside of her,” he muttered as he surveyed one scene of devastation after another and hurried on. “Them farmers must be aggravatin’ Imogene something awful to make her cut up this way. But I don’t blame her. If I had a trunk and weighed twenty-seven hundred pounds I’d smash down what she ain’t finished up. She and me agrees on farmers.” So, scattering right and left profanity and promises to settle, he toiled on, his tall hat in his hand and the perspiration streaming down his face. There was no such thing as keeping the trail in a team. Through copses and meadows, down water-courses and valleys and across farm dooryards the animal had led her pursuers. The trail was devious, too, as though Imogene, harassed on all sides, had kept turning, either to attack or dodge. In one place a considerable array of various samples of trousers cloth fluttering from a barbed wire fence indicated that there had been a hasty retreat. Hiram stopped and surveyed this scene with grim satisfaction.