"Well, I'll be dummed!" quoth the two in one voice.
"I don't understand northin' about it," said Hiram, plaintively. "But whatever it is, it has put me in a devil of a fix."
"If you're havin' any more trouble to your house than I'm havin' over to mine, then you've somethin' that I don't begrudge you none," added the Cap'n, gloomily.
"Woman left it," related Hiram. "It was in the edge of the evenin', and I hadn't come in from the barn. Woman throwed it onto the piazza and run. Reckon she waited her chance so't my wife would get holt of it. She did. She read it. And it's hell 'n' repeat on the Look premises."
"Ditto and the same, word for word," said the Cap'n.
"The handwritin' ain't much different," said the ex-showman, clutching Sproul's letter and comparing the two sheets. "But it's wimmen's work with a pen—there ain't no gettin' round that."
Then his voice broke into quavering rage as he went on.
"You jest think of a lovin', trustin', and confidin' woman gettin' holt of a gob of p'isen like that!" He shook the crackling sheet over his head. "'Darlin' Hiram, how could you leave me, but if you will come away with me now all will be forgiven and forgotten, from one who loves you truly and well, and has followed you to remind you of your promise.' My Gawd, Cap'n, ain't that something to raise a blister on the motto, 'God Bless Our Home'?"
"It's done it over to my house," said the Cap'n, lugubriously.
"There never was any such woman—there never could have been any such woman," Hiram went on in fervid protest. "There ain't nobody with a license to chase me up."