“No, no, my friend,” he said, with a kindling of his keen eye which expressed a degree of ferocity, “you can’t come it that-a-way on me. I’m a mighty fine man, I know, but folks ain’t got to sech a pass yet as to break into jail for a glimpse of me. You don’t get out of that door”--he nodded his head at it--“till you give me a reasonable reason for your extraordinary conduc’.” Tubal Cain Sims was silent. His hard old lips suddenly shut fast. His eyes gleamed with a dogged light. He would not speak had he no will to speak, and the officer should see which could hold out the longest at this game. He remembered how often he had hearkened to the complaints of the preternatural quality of his obstinacy with which Jane Ann Sims had beguiled the conjugal way since, a quarter of a century ago, they had left the doorstep of Parson Greenought’s house man and wife. Surely, if it had time and again vanquished Jane Ann Sims, how could the sheriff, a mere man, abide it? He had not, however, reckoned on certain means of compulsion which were not within the power of the doughty contestant for domestic supremacy. There was no visible communication between the older officer and the deputy when the young man said appealingly, “Ye won’t need handcuffs, Mr. Blake? Leastwise not till after we come from the jestice’s?” “Handcuffs!” screeched Tubal Sims, as violently cast out from the stronghold of his obstinate silence as if he had been hurtled thence by a catapult. “Ye hev got no right to handcuff me! I kem hyar of my own free will an’ accord. I ain’t no prisoner. Open that thar door,” he continued, lowering his voice to a tone of command and turning majestically to the sheriff. “Open that door, or I’ll hev the law of ye.” “Not till I have had the law of you,” replied the imperturbable functionary. “But, Jeemes,”--he turned with a disaffected aside to his young colleague,--“what d’ye go namin’ irons for? ’Tain’t polite to talk ’bout ironin’ a man old enough to be your father.” The deputy looked about in vague despair. He had but sought the effect upon the imagination of the mention of shackles, and indeed his words had potently affected the fancy of the only man in the room who possessed that illusive pictorial faculty. The stanch old mountaineer was all a-tremble. What would Jane Ann Sims think of this? He might have known that this journeying abroad in secret and without her advice would result disastrously! What indeed would Jane Ann Sims think of this? “Open that door!” he vociferated. “Ye hev got no right ter detain ME!” “What for not?” demanded the sheriff sternly. “What d’ye call this fix’n’?” He opposed to Tubal Cain Sims’s nose, with the trifling intervenient space of an inch, his own pistol. “Shootin’-iron!” sputtered Tubal, squinting fearfully at it.