The Skipper and the Skipped | Page 7

but after a time his heart began to glow under the reverent regard she bent on him. Never did mutual selection more naturally come about. She loved him for the perils he had braved, and he--robbed of his mistress, the sea--yearned for just such companionship as she was giving him. He had known that life lacked something. This was it.
And when one day, after a stuttering preamble that lasted a full half hour, he finally blurted out his heart-hankering, she wept a little while on his shoulder--it being luckily a time when there was no one passing--and then sobbingly declared it could never be.
"'Fraid of your brother, hey?" he inquired.
She bumped her forehead gently on his shoulder in nod of assent.
"I reckon ye like me?"
"Oh, Aaron!" It was a volume of rebuke, appeal, and affection in two words.
"Then there ain't nothin' more to say, little woman. You ain't never had any one to look out for your int'rests in this life. After this, it's me that does it. I don't want your money. I've got plenty of my own. But your interests bein' my interests after this, you hand ev'rything over to me, and I'll put a twist in the tail of that Bengal tiger in your fam'ly that 'll last him all his life."
At the end of a long talk he sent her away with a pat on her shoulder and a cheery word in her ear.
It was Old Man Jordan who, a week or so later, on his way to the village with butter in his bucket, stood in the middle of the road and tossed his arms so frenziedly that Colonel Ward, gathering up his speed behind the willows, pulled up with an oath.
"Ye're jest gittin' back from up-country, ain't ye?" asked Uncle Jordan.
"What do you mean, you old fool, by stoppin' me when I'm busy? What be ye, gittin' items for newspapers?"
"No, Kun'l Ward, but I've got some news that I thought ye might like to hear before ye went past the toll-house this time. Intentions between Cap'n Aaron Sproul and Miss Jane Ward has been published."
"Wha-a-at!"
"They were married yistiddy."
"Wha--" The cry broke into inarticulateness.
"The Cap'n ain't goin' to be toll-man after to-day. Says he's goin' to live on the home place with his wife. There!" Uncle Jordan stepped to one side just in time, for the gaunt horse sprung under the lash as though he had the wings of Pegasus.
The Cap'n was sitting in front of the toll-house. The tall horse galloped down the hill, but the Colonel stood up, and, with elbows akimbo and hands under his chin, yanked the animal to a standstill, his splay feet skating through the highway dust. The Colonel leaped over the wheel and reversed his heavy whip-butt. The Cap'n stood up, gripping a stout cudgel that he had been whittling at for many hours.
While the new arrival was choking with an awful word that he was trying his best to work out of his throat, the Cap'n pulled his little note-book out of his pocket and slowly drawled:
"I reckoned as how ye might find time to stop some day, and I've got your account all figgered. You owe thirteen tolls at ten cents each, one thutty, and thirteen times three dollars fine--the whole amountin' to jest forty dollars and thutty cents. Then there's a gate to--"
"I'm goin' to kill you right in your tracks where you stand!" bellowed the Colonel.
The Cap'n didn't wait for the attack. He leaped down off his porch, and advanced with the fierce intrepidity of a sea tyrant.
"You'll pay that toll bill," he gritted, "if I have to pick it out of your pockets whilst the coroner is settin' on your remains."
The bully of the countryside quailed.
"You've stole my sister!" he screamed. "This ain't about toll I'm talkin'. You've been and robbed me of my sister!"
"Do you want to hear a word on that?" demanded the Cap'n, grimly. He came close up, whirling the cudgel. "You're an old, cheap, ploughed-land blowhard, that's what you are! You've cuffed 'round hired men and abused weak wimmen-folks. I knowed you was a coward when I got that line on ye. You don't dast to stand up to a man like me. I'll split your head for a cent." He kept advancing step by step, his mien absolutely demoniac. "I've married your sister because she wanted me. Now I'm goin' to take care of her. I've got thutty thousand dollars of my own, and she's giv' me power of attorney over hers. I'll take every cent of what belongs to her out of your business, and I know enough of the way that your business is tied up to know that I can crowd you right to the wall. Now do ye want to fight?"
The tyrant's face grew