contented sense of importance, such as he hadn't felt since he had
stepped down from the quarter-deck of his own vessel. He even gazed
at the protruding and poignant centre of that rose on his carpet
slipper with milder eyes, and sniffed aromatic whiffs of liniment
with appreciation of its invigorating odor.

It was a particularly peaceful day. From his porch he could view a
wide expanse of rural scenery, and, once in a while, a flash of sun
against steel marked the location of some distant farmer in his
fields. There were no teams in sight on the highway, for the men of
Smyrna were too busily engaged on their acres. He idly watched a trail
of dun smoke that rose from behind a distant ridge and zigzagged
across the blue sky. He admired it as a scenic attraction, without
attaching any importance to it. Even when a woman appeared on the
far-off ridge and flapped her apron and hopped up and down and
appeared to be frantically signalling either the village in the
valley or the men in the fields, he only squinted at her through the
sunlight and wondered what ailed her. A sudden inspiring thought
suggested that perhaps she had struck a hornets' nest. He chuckled.

A little later a ballooning cloud of dust came rolling down the road
toward him and the toll-bridge that led to Smyrna village. He noted
that the core of the cloud was a small boy, running so hard that his
knees almost knocked under his chin. He spun to a halt in front of
the Cap'n's gate and gasped:

"Fi-ah, fi-ah, fi-ah-h-h-h, Chief! Ben Ide's house is a-fi-ah. I'll
holler it in the village and git 'em to ring the bell and start
'Hecla.'" Away he tore.