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Constable Zeburee Nute, emerging at a brisk trot from the town office, had a warning word of counsel for all those intending to venture upon the first selectman's privacy. He delivered it at Broadway's store. "Talk about your r'yal Peeruvian tigers with eighteen rings on their tails!
"I tell you that critter is dangerous, and you've got to get him. Instead of quietin' down he'll be growin' worse." There were eleven men in Smyrna, besides Zeburee Nute, who held commissions as constables, and those valiant officers Cap'n Sproul called into the first selectman's office that forenoon. He could not tell them any news.
But when she came back and looked at him, and sighed, and sighed, and looked at him till bedtime, shaking her head sadly when he demanded the reason for her pensiveness, he wished he had made her stay at home. He decided that Zeburee Nute had probably been busy with his tongue as to that boyish display of temper on the Rattledown Hill road.
He buttoned his jacket and hurried into Hiram's team, which was at the door. And with Hiram as charioteer they made time toward the Crymble place. Just out of the village they swept past Constable Zeburee Nute, whose slower Dobbin respectfully took the side of the highway.
Aaron Sproul, a devoted member of the W.T.W.'s, was appointed a committee of one to sound him, and found him, even in the sweet privacy of home, so singularly embarrassed and uncommunicative that her affectionate heart was disturbed and grieved. Then came Constable Zeburee Nute into the presence of the town's chief executive with a complaint.
"I'll give you something to do. To-morrow you go round town and hire half a dozen men say, Jackson Denslow, Zeburee Nute, Brad Wade, Seth Swanton, Ferd Parrott, and Ludelphus Murray. Be sure they're all members of the Ancient and Honorable Firemen's Association." "Hire 'em for what?" "Treasure-huntin' crew. I'll go with you. I'm their foreman, and I can make them keep their mouths shut.
It would be a pity and a shame to let a prominent man like that git away and fall into the hands of strangers." "All of ye take warnin'," bawled the Cap'n to his townsmen, who were crowding their wagons into the station square. Constable Zeburee Nute drove his whip into the socket, threw down his reins, and stood up. The hollow hoot of the locomotive had sounded up the track.
The members of Hecla fire department, glad to feel land under their country feet once more, capered about on the beach, surveying the limited attractions with curious eyes. Zeburee Nute, gathering seaweed to carry home to his wife, stripped the surface of a bowlder, and called excited attention to an anchor and a cross rudely hacked into the stone.
There's one man here that ain't afraid of his own shadder. I call on Constable Zeburee Nute to head the committee, and take along with him Constables Wade and Swanton. And I want to say to the voters here that it's a nice report to go abroad from this town that we have to pick from the police force to get men with enough courage to tell a citizen that he's been elected first selectman.
He paused suddenly, for he caught sight of three muddy wagons trundling in procession into the yard. In the first one sat Constable Zeburee Nute, his obtrusive nickel badge on his overcoat. Cap'n Sproul looked at Louada Murilla, and she stared at him, and in sudden panic both licked dry lips and were silent. The topic they had been pursuing left their hearts open to terror.
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