A nice little man came up the lane,

And it was summer weather;

Said he, “It is jolly to meet again,

Like this, we two together.

And if there be no other thing

That you can think to say,

Then it’s ‘How do you do? ’ and ‘How do you do?’

And ‘How do you do, to-day? ’ ”

It was “Figger-four” Avery who secured from Hiram Look the most information about himself for general circulation. When, after the first few days of wonderment, the attendance at the Squire’s premises dropped off, it was “Figger-four” who remained loyal to the new attraction. Hiram tolerated his constant presence because the little man’s wide-eyed, wide-eared, wide-mouthed receptiveness of his tales flattered the eminent impresario of Imogene and her appanage.

Avery was so small and inoffensive that the showman never resented any questions that he asked. All others Hiram shooed off with profanity when they hinted concerning his affairs and intentions.

“Blast him,” growled Hiram to his brother, “I feel like a sap tree with a spile let into it when he’s around. I just drip and drip away to him and he sets and laps it down and I can’t seem to shut off. But he’s an obligin’ little fool.”

Avery’s soubriquet came from the appearance of his legs. A fever-sore years before had shriveled the left leg, and the knee was set permanently at an angle. As he bobbed along, alternately rising and sinking, he kept presenting with his legs the shape of a grotesque 4.

“Everywhere I go,” said Hiram, “Figger-four is right at my elbow, still askin’ questions. And I get interested in answerin’ and I forget and try to keep step with him, and the first thing I know I’m hoppin’ along worse than a darned jack-rabbit. But he’ll do errands like a fly.”

Therefore he did not rebuff the little man. In consequence Avery was able to report that Hiram had travelled all over the country; that he had brought his chariots to Palermo because he was going to start out with another circus after he got rested up and had squared things with his brother. Furthermore, the people who had bought his other show property weren’t willing to pay a fair price for the waggons, and Hiram didn’t propose to be “Jewed.” No one had ever got the better of Hiram, so Hiram told Avery, and Avery told the people of Palermo. He had—at this point Figger-four always took a long breath—rising forty thousand dollars in the bank, beside what he carried in the fat pocketbook. He was ready to lend money on first mortgages, and Avery was able to state that already several persons whom Judge Willard had been squeezing for bonuses on renewal of their notes had refunded their loans with Hiram. As Avery bobbed around telling this, he served as an excellent advertising medium, and other patrons of Judge Willard, who had been the town’s sole financial man for years, came to the new capitalist for loans. Avery admitted that probably the Judge would still enjoy a monopoly of handling the money of the widows and orphans and old folks who had placed their funds with him for investment, because Hiram was not yet morally rehabilitated in the town’s opinion.

“But there ain’t a better man to borrow money from,” concluded his champion. “He don’t take no bonus and he lets you have it for six per cent, and set your own time.”

Moreover, Hiram started the hum of industry in Palermo by hiring Ezra Mayo and several helpers to build a shelter for the circus waggons. And he was also vaguely hinting to the admiring Avery that next season he might start something in the way of business in Palermo that would make people open their eyes.

“You’re all deader’n a side-show mermaid here in Palermo,” he said one afternoon as he and Avery were sitting by the roadside under one of the big Look poplars. “There’s a lot of things that need to be peppered up. My brother Phin could have done it if he wasn’t too easy-goin’. Now, how long has old Coll Willard been town treasurer?”

There was a queer glint in the good eye that Hiram turned on Avery.

“Goin’ on thirty years.”

“Does he give bonds?”

“Hain’t ever been asked to,” replied Figger-four, with the readiness of one whose business is to know other people’s affairs. “This town wouldn’t ask a Willard to do such a thing as that. He’s safer’n the Bank of England, the Judge is.”

“Is, eh?” Hiram’s voice was hard. “I’ve seen a town note that was signed with only his name as treasurer. Does the town allow him to borrow money that way?”

“I believe Cap’n Ward did bring it up in town meetin’ once and say that the selectmen ought to sign notes along with the treasurer. But there wa’n’t anything done, as I remember. Cap’n was kind of a kicker. He died the summer after that town meetin’,” added Avery, with an air as though the death were a special visitation to punish temerity in attacking a Willard.

“Well, I’m feelin’ pretty healthy, myself,” said Hiram, “and you watch me go into the next town meetin’.”

“Lyme Bearce says he’ll bet you’re a disturbin’ element, no matter where you light,” stated Avery, with the fearless naÏvetÉ of a village news-bureau that proposes to do its full duty.

“Lyme Bearce and the whole of you be jiggered,” stormed Hiram. “I’ve been ’round the world some, and got up against human nature, and I tell you the only way to meet a man is with one hand hold of your wad and the other doubled up behind your back. Old Willard ain’t goin’ to run this town to suit himself. You watch me!”

“Then you ain’t goin’ off right away with your circus?” meekly asked Avery.

“I shan’t be goin’ till things get dull ’round here,” crisply returned the showman. “That’ll be after there’s a performance in one ring, me with the whip, old Coll Willard ridin’ bareback, and ev’ry time I snap he’ll turn a flip-flop.”

Figger-four blinked at him uncertainly.

“Let’s see, you ain’t ever seen Klebe since you—you——”

“Since I licked him! Say it; I ain’t ashamed of it,” blustered Hiram.

“Well, he’s thickened up solid’s a knot, and they say there’s more knockin’ down o’ men on board the ‘Lycurgus Webb’ than on any other schooner that sails out of Rockland. Terrible hard man Klebe has growed to be!”

Avery glanced at the showman slyly to note how he received this information.

“I have squared all accounts with Klebe Willard,” said Hiram, “but if I owe him anything more he can come and collect it. As for his father, that’s another matter. He took my old father by the throat after I went away and he had the twist noose of a mortgage around him for a good hold. He bought in accounts against us, as ev’ryone in P’lermo knows, so that he could collect the bills in a way to add ev’ry cent of costs that skin-skunk lawyers could tack on. And my old father and my brother was caught foul and paid double—yes, treble—for ev’ry dollar I owed. I ain’t nothin’ except plain muck, Avery—just a cheap renegade that hasn’t woke up to be half decent till it is too late. Payin’ it back to Phin don’t fix it. I shall always hate myself—but never mind that!” He swallowed hard and shook his head violently to and fro. Sudden passion blazed out of this moment of weakness. “There’s one thing I can do—I can spend forty thousand dollars puttin’ Coll Willard where he put my old father, and, by the gods, I’ll do it! That’s my business and no one’s else, and they can’t oh-please-don’t me!—no one, Avery, no one!”

“Oh, I reckon the Judge is too well fixed for you,” observed Avery, wagging his head. “The Willards was always wuth money—plenty of it.”

Hiram did not reply. But he snorted contemptuously and his eye had a strange look of craft and secret intelligence. “S’pose your brother will be your lawyer,” suggested Avery.

“Look-a-here, Figger-four,” cried the showman, “I’ve been drippin’ away to you as usual without meanin’ to say half that I have. My brother Phin has been abused by old Willard, right and left, but he has been too easy to fight back the way he ought to. I’m squarin’ things for our family in gen’ral, but it has got to be done without Phin’s knowin’ it. Do you see? I want to use you some, first and last, and you’ll get your pay, but if you say one single word to Phin about what I’m doin’, I’ll twist that other leg of yours till the joint comes behind like a cow’s hind gambrel. Me and you, and mum! You understand!”

Avery apprehensively promised and escaped, evidently fearful lest more secrets were to be entrusted to him. He felt that he wasn’t capable of safely holding any more just then. But the consciousness that Hiram Look was meditating the overthrow of such a magnate as Judge Willard propped his eyes open a bit more widely as he hopped about the street, and people began to wonder why Figger-four so often caught himself up in his discourse and looked scared and hurried away. They didn’t realise how anxiously the poor sieve was struggling to hold his secrets. The constant and sulphurous threats of Hiram started the cold sweat whenever they conferred together. Day by day Avery brought new bits of information that the showman sent him to dig out of people, and day by day Hiram fitted the information, piece to piece, only himself knowing to what it all tended.

He sat most of the time in the porch of the old house, smoking long cigars, the parrot occasionally croaking his familiar cry as he waddled about his cage, that was suspended from the porch roof.

“My office,” Hiram called the porch.

People who wanted to borrow money, old acquaintances, folks who loafed along that way to hear his stories of wanderings, came and sat on the turf of the yard or on the steps. The showman shunned Brickett’s store and the other gathering places of the village. Once, Hard-Times Wharff came up and started to have a weather-vane spell on the Look porch, but Hiram drove him away with violent contumely.

“He’s crazier’n a barn rat in a thrashing machine,” the showman observed to his faithful Avery. “Why, I hear he even said I was bringing trouble into this place, the old liar. I’ve only come to straighten out trouble, that’s all. Smoothin’ and glossin’ things over and lettin’ people kick you around and never objectin’ may be some folks’ idea of livin’, but it ain’t mine. And I don’t allow anyone to say I’m makin’ trouble when I’m doin’ a duty. You tell that to ’em in the village, Avery, and you tell old Whatyecallum Wharff, there, that I’ll feed him to Imogene if he snoops ’round here again.”

But the next day Avery came bobbing hurriedly into the yard with the breathless announcement:

“’Quar’us smelt it comin’! ’Twas a warnin’ to you, Hime!”

“Smelt what? That load of superphosphate that Cap’n Nymphus Bodfish just brought in his packet? I can smell it, too.”

“Klebe Willard came in that packet,” gasped Avery. “His schooner is loadin’ at Portland, and he’s up for his lay-off.”

“Well, what if he did come?” inquired Hiram, rocking on the hind legs of his chair and boring Avery with his piercing eye.

“Why, all is, he’s talked with the Judge, and now he’s frothin’ ’round Brickett’s store, and he’s comin’ up here. I stayed long enough to find that out.”

“Let him come,” observed Hiram, with a calmness that troubled Avery.

The messenger snapped up the full length of his good leg and shook his cane at the imperturbable man on the porch. “But there’s liable to be trouble,” he cried. “Klebe’s pretty middlin’ how-come-ye-so, same as he usually is when he’s ashore, and there’s enough folks in this place to want to see trouble and they’ll poke him ahead. Why don’t you have him put under bonds?”

Hiram got up and stepped down into the road. A man had already started out of Brickett’s store and was stumping up the middle of the dusty highway. A dozen men were leisurely following along the gravelled sidewalks. When the distant pedestrian perceived Hiram, he shouted hoarsely, shook both fists above his head and came on with brisk pace.

“Avery,” said Hiram, “you gallop down with your best high-Betty-Martin tiptoe and tell that gent that’s in the middle of the road that there’s nothing’ doin’ in the circus way here this afternoon.”

Avery stood hesitating.

“Hop along,” roared the showman, giving the man a push. “You’ve been whinin’ that you didn’t want trouble here. Now get into the game and stop it. You can inform Klebe Willard—for I reckon that’s him tackin’ up this way—that when he steps his foot onto the Look place he’s steppin’ onto a proposition that has the burnin’ deck laid away in the ice-box. Tell him I said so.”

Hiram left the road and went into the big barn.

The other came on more rapidly now, with a shout that was something like a jeer. He violently bumped the entreating Avery from his path and strode into the Look yard, the retinue following at a distance.

The new arrival set his sturdy legs wide apart, threw his cloth cap on the ground, and bellowed:

“Come out here in the fair and open, where there’s sea-room, you old woodchuck! Come out and see the mark I’ve lugged for twenty-five years.”

He slapped his hand against his cheek where a scar showed its wrinkled whiteness across his flushed, brown face.

“Come out!” he bawled.

“Crack ’em down, gents,” squawked the parrot, and he seized a bar of the cage in his beak and rattled away vigorously.

“Come out!” Willard kept shouting, stamping about on the turf. “If you ain’t turned coward as well as skin-game thief, come out!” The parrot interspersed in these invitations his raucous cries.

“Between you and Absalom a man can’t do his chores in much peace,” calmly said Hiram, appearing in the tie-up door. He stepped into the yard, set the tip of a long-handled pitchfork in the ground, and leaned his shoulder against this support.

“You see that, do you?” yelled Willard, striding forward a few steps and putting a thick forefinger end on the scar. “That’s been there twenty-five years.”

“Let’s see. You’re Cap’n Klebe Willard, ain’t you?” inquired Hiram, affably. And a wordless shout answering him, he said:

“Yes, I know you and I know the mark, because I put it there myself for good reasons.” He looked around at the little group of spectators with an air of secure triumph.

“And you threw my poor old father over his own fence, you coward, when I wasn’t there to defend him. Now, Hime Look, you’ve got to meet a man and not a boy.”

He rolled his sleeves up from his hairy wrists.

“You’ve got to fight a man and fight him in order to pay a bill you’ve owed here in Palermo for a long time.”

Look still leaned on the pitchfork. “Put down your fork!” bawled the frenzied skipper, “I’m not one of your tame animals,” and without other preface he rushed at Hiram.

The showman had been watching him with his sound eye glowing redly, the glass one glaring impassively. At the skipper’s rush, with the facility an old circus man displays with a pitchfork, he shortened the handle in his grasp, speared one tine through the generous cartilage of Willard’s ear, and before that furious adversary fairly realised what had happened, he swung him on his heel, forced him back by the pain of the pierced ear, and then driving the tines into the side of the barn, set both fists on the end of the handle and had the frantic man a safe prisoner at the end of the fork. Willard writhed a few times, groaning as his ear tugged against the steel. Then he stood up, perforce as stiff as a soldier, and roared at Hiram all the billingsgate of a long coast “language-artist.” The grim captor simply glared at him until he had exhausted himself.

“A hyeny came at me in a cage once,” said the showman, reminiscently, in the first pause, “and I caught him just like this, and I held him till the fight was all out of him. Now, Klebe, you’ve come up here drunk as a fiddler’s hoorah and wantin’ to fight. You can’t fight with me to make a town spectacle. That’s what your father tried to do—make a town spectacle of me. I won’t stand for it. The Willard family can have all the trouble with me it’s lookin’ for, so far’s I’m personally concerned, but not in knock-downs. Those don’t settle things. You can see that for yourself. We fi’t twenty-five years ago, and here you are just as hot for it next time I see you.”

The skipper burst into a fresh rage, and Hiram calmly waited.

“The idea is, Klebe,” he went on in a maddeningly patronising way, “you’ve always done about as you wanted to and made others stand ’round. Now, I’ve come back to Palermo to do a little runnin’ of things for myself. I’ll give you your chance at me when the right and proper time comes, and fair warning ahead. And when you say that you’ll walk off these premises, then I’ll pull out the fork. If you don’t promise here before these people to keep away from me and shut up about fights, you may as well make arrangements to have your meals brought.”

At that moment Squire Phin came hastily into the yard, in advance of the puffing, hopping, terrified Figger-four, who had brought him.

“Hiram,” he called, as he came within hearing, “release Captain Willard.”

“Not until he promises to behave himself.”

For answer the Squire, his face flaming with indignation, stepped behind his brother, and, seizing him by the shoulders, yanked him backwards. The fork came away and Willard stood free, clutching his bleeding ear. As he rushed again at Hiram, the Squire stepped between. He said slowly, quietly, yet with something in his face and his mien that was soul-compelling:

“Captain Willard, you go home!”

After a long stare at him, a stare that at last grew wavering, Willard turned and went out of the yard.

The Squire stood and looked at his brother while the spectators stole sheepishly away. His hands were clasped behind his back; sorrow, anger, and reproach were upon his face.

At last the showman stooped and dragged the fork tine to and fro on the grass to restore its brightness.

“I don’t want to poison Imogene,” he growled.

The Squire was still silent.

“Well, say it,” snapped Hiram. “It’s on your mind. Let’s have it. I’m gettin’ used to bein’ called names.”

But his brother only shook his head slowly, his eyes lowered to the ground. He turned and walked back toward his office.

Hiram gazed after him as long as he was in sight, and then he went into the barn. The big doors at the rear were open, and the elephant, with eyes directed on the soothing landscape, was comfortably weaving to and fro. She crooked her trunk at him as he came near and curved it around his shoulders when he stood beside her.

“Old girl,” he said, mournfully, “I reckon the cards was stacked when they dealt me my hand in this game o’ life. I’m a storm centre that would put a barometer out of business, but”—he took hold of her ragged ear and shouted into it, as though the affirmation did his resolution good,—“it’s me for the Willard family, just the same, and Phin along with me at the finish. You never did give a continental for me, old girl, till I had licked you to a standstill, and I know families that’s like you.”