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The stove man and Hiram followed him in and the disinterested onlookers came, too, curiosity impelling them. And as they were Smyrna farmers who had suffered various and aggravating depredations by this same Aholiah Luce, they were willing to lend a hand even to lug out a hot stove.

The whole of Smyrna was ringing with the intelligence that Aholiah Luce had turned outlaw and was on the rampage. The constables, however, could give Selectman Sproul some news. They gave it to him after he had ordered them to surround Mr. Luce and take him, dynamite and all. This news was to the effect that they had resigned.

Aholiah Luce came walking into the village, spent, forlorn, and draggled. She went straight to the town office, and seated herself in front of the musing first selectman. "I've come to call on for town help," she said. "I haven't got scrap nor skred to eat, and northin' to cook it with. You've gone to work and put us in a pretty mess, Mister S'leckman.

And it was agreed that Aholiah Luce, weak of wit and morally pernicious, was a delicate matter, when all sides were taken into account. To them appeared Aholiah Luce, striding down the middle of the street, with that ominous sack on his shoulder. "Be I an outlaw, or ain't I?" he shouted over and over, raising a clamor in the quiet village that brought the Cap'n out of the town house.

"Had you just as soon come through the kitchen with me?" asked the Cap'n in a whisper as he approached his wife. "I'm goin' to do up what's left of that plum-duff and take it home. It kind o' hits my tooth!" Mr. Aholiah Luce, of the Purgatory Hollow section of Smyrna, stood at bay on the dirt-banking of his "castle," that is, a sagged-in old hulk of a house of which only the L was habitable.

"He's allus been threatenin' what kairosene and matches would do to barns; and it wouldn't be no satisfaction to send 'Liah Luce to State Prison he ain't account enough. It wouldn't pay the loser for a stand of buildin's havin' him there." Cap'n Sproul began to understand some of the sane business reasons that guaranteed the immunity of Aholiah Luce, so long as he stuck to petty thieving.