"I didn't have any idee, Colonel, I was goin' to like it so well on shore as I do. Of course, you meet some pleasant and some unpleasant people, but that sister of yours is sartinly the finest woman that ever trod shoe-leather, and it was Providunce a-speakin' to me when she--" The team passed away into the gloomy mouth of the Smyrna bridge. III Once on a time when the Wixon boy put Paris-green in the Trufants' well, because the oldest Trufant girl had given him the mitten, Marm Gossip gabbled in Smyrna until flecks of foam gathered in the corners of her mouth. But when Cap'n Aaron Sproul, late of the deep sea, so promptly, so masterfully married Col. Gideon Ward's sister--after the irascible Colonel had driven every other suitor away from that patient lady--and then gave the Colonel his "everlasting comeuppance," and settled down in Smyrna as boss of the Ward household, that event nearly wore Gossip's tongue into ribbons. "I see'd it from a distance--the part that happened in front of the toll-house," said Old Man Jordan. "Now, all of ye know that Kun'l Gid most gin'ly cal'lates to eat up folks that says 'Boo' to him, and pick his teeth with slivers of their bones. But talk about your r'yal Peeruvian ragin' lions--of wherever they come from--why, that Cap'n Sproul could back a 'Rabian caterwouser right off'm Caterwouser Township! I couldn't hear what was said, but I see Kun'l Gid, hoss-gad and all, backed right up into his own wagon; and Cap'n Sproul got in, and took the reins away from him as if he'd been a pindlin' ten-year-old, and drove off toward the Ward home place. And that Cap'n don't seem savage, nuther." "Wal, near's I can find out," said Odbar Broadway from behind his counter, where he was counting eggs out of Old Man Jordan's bucket, "the Cap'n had a club in one hand and power of attorney from Kun'l Gid's sister in the other--and a threat to divide the Ward estate. The way Gid's bus'ness is tied up jest at present would put a knot into the tail of 'most any kind of a temper." "I'm told the Cap'n is makin' her a turrible nice husband," observed one of the store loungers. Broadway folded his specs into their case and came from behind the counter. "Bein' a bus'ness man myself," he said, "I come pretty nigh knowin' what I'm talkin' about. Kun'l Gid Ward can never flout and jeer that the man that has married his sister was nothin' but a prop'ty-hunter. I'm knowin' to it that Cap'n Sproul has got thutty thousand in vessel prop'ty of his own, 'sides what his own uncle Jerry here left to him. Gid Ward has trompled round this town for twenty-five years, and bossed and browbeat and cussed, and got the best end of every trade. If there's some one come along that can put the wickin' to him in good shape, I swow if this town don't owe him a vote of thanks." "There's a movement on already to ask Cap'n Sproul to take the office of first s'lec'man at the March meetin'," said one of the loafers.