Hiram did not waste words with the man. He drove both his broad hands against his breast, rushed him backward to the store wall and choked him until his tongue lolled. “Will ye? Will ye go?” he kept saying. But each time he loosened his grip the skipper only cursed or cried for help. He was struggling madly all the time, but Hiram’s strength and passion were too much for him. “I don’t b’lieve in abusin’ no man,” observed Brickett from his door. “I reckon you’d better let that man go, Hime Look. You can’t sass and browbeat and bang round ev’ry one in this place.” “You fools,” panted Hiram, “Judge Willard and those children are in that dory. There is no one else who would try to go out of this place into that storm. It’s Judge Willard, I tell you! You are goin’ to take me out, Nymp’ Bodfish, if I have to tear you apart and lug you down to your packet in pound packages. I’ll kill the man that interferes. Will you go, I say?” He fell upon the skipper with such desperate fury that when he again released his clutch the man staggered away dizzily in his iron grip. They disappeared around the corner of the storehouse and in a little while the sharp “plock-plock” of the _Effort’s_ engine barked in the interim of the thunder crashes. “Them Looks is sartinly the desp’ritest critters when they git started I ever see,” remarked the man in the waggon, after he had watched the two men out of sight. “Well, if he weighed bigger’n that el’phunt of his he wouldn’t lug me and my own bo’t off on no such wild-goose chase as he’s goin’ on,” growled Brickett, getting ready to shut his big doors. He was apparently unconvinced regarding the occupants of the dory. “That was about the biggest piece of nerve I ever saw showed out, and I’ve seen some good ones in my day.” “And I’ve seen some good old showers in _my_ time,” remarked the man in the waggon, picking up his reins. “But”--a crackling explosion interrupted him---“this is sartinly the king of old lingers.” He larruped his horse around the corner into the shed, for the big trees were beginning to twist and moan and the big drops to lash the dust. CHAPTER XXIV--THE CREDIT SHEET, AFTER THE LOOK AND THE WILLARD FAMILIES STRIKE THEIR BALANCES If we could write upon his gravestun’s face A list of what he’d done to help this place, We’d have a roll of honour to his fame, But we should publish all our village shame. There’d be a list of heirs and all their fights; The sorrows and the heart-aches over rights; There’d be the frowns, the snarls, the sneers and scorn Out of the leavin’s of our dead men born. There’d be the threats and mutt’rin’s of divorce And all the griefs that spring from Trouble’s source. ‘Twas better that this calendar was crossed With note:--“By order of J. Brown nol pressed.”