“Run for your grandmother!” snorted Hiram. “What have I ever done to you that you should twit me that style? No, s’r, I’ll jest say this much to you, Sime. There’s a certain old son of a pickerel that I’m layin’ for in this town, and I’m goin’ to have him. I’m goin’ to walk one way acrost him and then come back the same way and wipe my feet on him. I tell ye, Sime, when an old harker that has got plenty of his own, jest gets out his knife and lets the financial blood out of a poor old man and a strugglin’ boy, only for the sake of lettin’ it, then if he don’t get it handed to him here--well, I may be lodged in another part of hell from him and shan’t be able to see what is passed to him there. So it’s me for him in this life! I tell you, Sime, our trip to Square Harbour wa’n’t all for nothin’. We done a good deed and we are gettin’ our pay passed right back to us.” With this curious but entirely characteristic reflection on the dispensations of Providence, Hiram tossed away his cigar butt and answered the supper call of Aunt Rhoda. CHAPTER XVI--THE DISAPPOINTING “TEST CASE” OF SUMNER BADGER, A “SAMPLE CITIZEN” OF PALERMO There once was a Quaker, Orasmus Nute, With a physog. as stiff as a cowhide boot, And he skippered a ship from Georgetown, Maine, In the ’way back days of the pirates’ reign. And the story I tell it has to do With Orasmus Nute and a black flag crew-- The tale of the upright course he went In the face of a certain predicament. --Ballad of “Orasmus Nute.” There was at least one secret in his life that “Fig-ger-Four” Avery kept. He never told what inspired Imogene to make her dash for liberty. Squire Phin didn’t exactly understand the tableau he had beheld, and charitably refrained from mentioning to his brother how music, as rendered by Uncle Wharff, failed to soothe the savage breast. As for Hiram, he did not seem to be interested enough to ask any questions. Whenever he mentioned the elephant’s escapade to Peak, he referred to the affair with a sort of grim blithesomeness. Weeks afterward, when the first damp, swirling snow of winter was clotting itself on the windows of the little sitting-room, he sat for a long time, figuring in a grimy account book with a stubby lead pencil. Every once in a while he chuckled. “J. B. Sawtelle,” he murmured, “items: four begonies and three geraniums mashed in front yard, one washin’ scattered hoorah-ste’-boy--say, Sime, Imogene with a night gown on one tush and a pair of J. B.’s flannel drawers flyin’ distress from the other, and sheddin’ assorted articles such as found on a well-regulated clothes-line, as she hurrooped down through the beech growth, must have been worth double the price of a high-dive feature.” His shoulders, hunched in the rocking-chair, shook with suppressed mirth.