But she staggered when searching scrutiny confirmed the dreadful suspicion of that first glimpse through the geraniums. For precaution's sake Cap'n Sproul still held Mr. Crymble by the scrabbled cloth in the back of his coat, and that despairing individual dangled like a manikin. But he braced his thin legs stubbornly when the Cap'n tried to push him toward the porch. "If married couples are goin' to act like this on judgment mornin'," muttered the mediator, "it will kind o' take the edge off'm the festivities. Say, you two people, why don't you hoorah a few times and rush up and hug and kiss and live happy ever after?" But as soon as Mrs. Crymble could get her thin lips nipped together and her hands on her hips she pulled herself into her accustomed self-reliant poise. "It's you, is it, you straddled-legged, whittled-to-a-pick-ed northin' of a clothes-pin, you? You've sneaked back to sponge on me in your old age after runnin' off and leavin' me with a run-down farm and mortgidge! After sendin' me a marked copy of a paper with your death-notice, and after your will was executed on and I wore mournin' two years and saved money out of hen profits to set a stun' in the graveyard for you! You mis'sable, lyin' 'whelp o' Satan!" "There wa'n't no lie to it," said Mr. Crymble, doggedly. "I did die. I died three times--all by violent means. First time I froze to death, second--" "Let up on that!" growled the Cap'n, vigorously shaking Mr. Crymble. "This ain't no dime-novel rehearsal. It's time to talk business!" "You bet it's time to talk business!" affirmed the "widow." "I've paid off the mortgidge on this place by hard, bone labor, and it's willed to me and the will's executed, and now that you've been proved dead by law, by swanny I'll make you prove you're alive by law before you can set foot into this house." "And I'll go and buy the law for you!" cried Batson Reeves, stripping the blanket off his horse. "I'll drive straight to my brother Alcander's law office, and he'll find law so that a hard-workin' woman can't be robbed of her own." "Oh, he'll find it, all right!" agreed the Cap'n, sarcastically. "And if he don't find it ready-made he'll gum together a hunk to fit the case. But in the mean time, here's a man--" he checked himself and swung Mr. Crymble's hatchet face close to his own. "How much money have you got?" he demanded. "Have you come back here strapped?" "I ain't got any money," admitted Mr. Crymble, "but I own a secret how to cure stutterin' in ten lessons, and with that school-house that--" "You don't dock in any school-house nor you don't marine railway into our poorhouse, not to be a bill of expense whilst I'm first selectman," broke in Cap'n Sproul with decision. "That's official, and I've got a license to say it."