cannot remember them."

"I ain't no dadfired guide-board to stand here all day and p'int the
way to Pharline Pike's," roared Ward, with a heat that astonished
the decayed gentleman.

"I don't want no elder to go away from this place and report that
he wa'n't used respectful," said Sproul, meekly, addressing the
stranger. "You'll have to excuse Colonel Ward here. P'r'aps I can
say for him, as a pertickler friend, what it wouldn't be modest for
him to say himself. The fact is, he's en--"

The infuriated Ward leaped up and down on the sward and shrieked the
road instructions to the wayfarer, who hustled away, casting
apprehensive glances over his shoulder.

But when the Colonel turned again on the Cap'n, the latter rose and
hobbled with extravagant limpings toward the house.

"I don't reckon I can stay out here and pass talk with you,
brother-in-law," he called back, reproachfully. "Strangers, passin'
as they be, don't like to hear no such language as you're usin'. Jest
think of what that elder said!"

Ward planted himself upon a garden chair, and gazed down the road
in the direction in which the strangers had gone. He seemed to be
thinking deeply, and the Cap'n watched him from behind one of the
front-room curtains.

Two more men passed up the road. At the first, the Colonel flourished