Then came Constable Zeburee Nute into the presence of the town's chief executive with a complaint.
"They're gittin' worse'n hornicks round me," he whined, "them Double-yer T. Double-yers. Want Ferd's place raided for licker. But I understood you to tell me—"
"I hain't told you northin' about it!" roared the Cap'n, with mighty clap of open palm on the town ledger.
"Well, you hain't give off orders to raid, seize and diskiver, libel and destroy," complained the officer.
"What be you, a 'tomatom that don't move till you pull a string, or be you an officer that's supposed to know his own duty clear, and follow it?" demanded the first selectman.
"Constables is supposed to take orders from them that's above 'em," declared Mr. Nute. "I'm lookin' to you, and the Double-yer T. Double-yers is lookin' to you."
"Well, if it's botherin' your eyesight, you'd better look t'other way," growled the Cap'n.
"Be I goin' to raid or ain't I goin' to raid?" demanded Constable Nute. "It's for you to say!"
"Look here, Nute," said the Cap'n, rising and aiming his forefinger at the constable's nose as he would have levelled a bulldog revolver, "if you and them wimmen think you're goin' to use me as a pie-fork to lift hot dishes out of an oven that they've heated, you'd better leave go—that's all I've got to say."
"You might just as well know it's makin' talk," ventured the constable, taking a safer position near the door. A queer sort of embarrassment that he noted in the Cap'n's visage emboldened him. "You know just as well as I do that Ferd Parrott has gone and took to sellin' licker. Old Branscomb is goin' home tea-ed up reg'lar, and Al Leavitt and Pud Follansby and a half a dozen others are settin' there all times of night, playin' cards and makin' a reg'lar ha'nt of it. If Ferd ain't shet up it will be said"—the constable looked into the snapping eyes of the first selectman and halted apprehensively.