"If she's goin' to be caught we've got to catch her," insisted Hiram. "She's crazy, or else she wouldn't be watchin' for us to leave the house so as to grab in and toss one of them letters. Looks to me it's just revenge, and to make trouble. The darned fool can't marry both of us. I didn't sleep last night--not with that woman of mine settin' and boohooin'. I just set and thought. And the result of the thinkin' is that we'll take our valises to-day and march to the railroad-station in the face and eyes of everybody so that it will get spread round that we've gone. And we'll come back by team from some place down the line, and lay low either round your premises or mine and ketch that infernal, frowzle-headed sister of Jim the Penman by the hind leg and snap her blasted head off." "What be you goin' to tell the wimmen?" "Tell 'em northin'." "There'll be the devil to pay. They'll think we're elopin'." "Well, let 'em think," said Hiram, stubbornly. "They can't do any harder thinkin' than I've been thinkin', and they can't get a divorce in one night. When we ketch that woman we can preach a sermon to 'em with a text, and she'll be the text." Cap'n Sproul sighed and went for his valise. "What she said to me as I come away curled the leaves in the front yard," confided Hiram, as they walked together down the road. "Ditto and the same," mourned the Cap'n. At dusk that evening they dismounted from a Vienna livery-hitch on a back road in Smyrna, paid the driver and dismissed the team, and started briskly through the pastures across lots toward Hiram Look's farm. An hour later, moving with the stealth of red Indians, they posted themselves behind the stone wall opposite the lane leading into the Look dooryard. They squatted there breathing stertorously, their eyes goggling into the night. The Cap'n, with vision trained by vigils at sea, was the first to see the dim shape approaching. When she had come nearer they saw a tall feather nodding against the dim sky. "Let's get her before she throws the letter--get her with the goods on her!" breathed Hiram, huskily. And when she was opposite they leaped the stone wall. She had seasonable alarm, for several big stones rolled off the wall's top. And she turned and ran down the road with the two men pounding along fiercely in pursuit. "My Gawd!" gasped Aaron, after a dozen rods; "talk about--gayzelles--she's--she's--" He didn't finish the sentence, preferring to save his breath.