up, after an hour or so, and come trampin’ over to where we was. "Well," he snaps, "it’s blowin’ hard enough now, ain’t it? Why don’t you take us home?" "How about the auto?" I asked. The auto could stay where it was until the horses came to pull it out. As for him he wanted to be took home. "But—but are you able to go?" asked Shelton, anxious. What in the sulphur blazes did we mean by that? Course he was able to go! And had Shelton got another cigar in his clothes? All of the sail home I was expectin’ to see that military man keel over and begin his digestion torments. But he didn’t keel. He smoked and talked and was better-natured than ever I’d seen him. He didn’t mention his stomach once and you can be sure and sartin that I didn’t. As we was comin’ up to the moorin’s in Ostable, I’m blessed if he didn’t begin to sing, a kind of a fool tune about "Down where the somethin’-or-other runs." Then I _was_ scared, because I judged that his attack had started and delirium was settin’ in. Shelton shook hands with me at the landin’. "You’re all right, Cap’n Snow," he says. "That was the best meal I ever tasted and nobody but you could have conjured it up in the middle of a howlin’ wilderness. If there’s anything I can do for you at any time just let me know." There was one thing he could do, of course, but I wouldn’t be mean enough to mention it then. The Major and I had, generally speakin’, fought fair, and I wouldn’t take advantage of a delirious invalid. And just then up comes the invalid himself. "See here, Snow," says he, pretty gruff; "I’ll probably be dead afore mornin’, but afore I die I want to tell you that I’m much obliged to you for bringin’ us home. Yes, and—and, by the great and mighty, I’m obliged to you for that chowder and the rest of it! It’ll be my death, but nothin’ ever tasted so good to me afore. There!" "That’s all right," says I. "No, it ain’t all right. I’m much obliged, I tell you. You’re a stubborn, obstinate, unreasonable old hayseed, but you’re the most competent person in this town just the same. Of course though," he adds, sharp, "you understand that this don’t affect our post-office fight in the least. That Blaisdell woman don’t get it." "Who said it did affect it?" I asked, just as snappy as he was. That’s the way we parted and I wondered if I’d ever see him alive again. I didn’t see him for quite a spell, but I heard about him. I woke up nights expectin’ to be jailed for murder, but I wa’n’t; and when, three days later, Shelton started for Washin’ton, the Major went away on the train with him. Abubus and his wife shut up the house and went off, too, and nobody seemed to know where they’d gone. All’s could be found out was that Abubus acted pretty ugly and wouldn’t talk to anybody. This was comfortin’ in a way, though, 

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