d shipped out like a snake. And so it turned out again in
Ascalon that comedy came in to end the play where tragedy had begun it.

Morgan bore no part in this unexpected climax to his hard-straining and
doubt-clouded day. He stood by watchful and alert, a great peace in his
mind, a great lightness. He had come through it according to Rhetta
Thayer's wish, according to his own desire, with no man's blood upon his
hands.

There were many willing ones who came forward to make light the labor of
Seth Craddock's packing. They unbound his hands with derision and
bundled him into the capacious long box against his strivings and curses
with scorn. Morgan suggested the enclosure of a jug of water. Let him
frizzle and fry, they said. They'd bore an auger hole or two in the box
to give him air, and that was greater humanity than he deserved. Morgan
insisted on at least a bottle of water, and had his way, against
grumbling.

The undertaker officiated, as if it were a regular funeral, putting the
long screws in the stout lid while citizens sat on it to hold the
explosive old villain down. They fastened him in as securely as if he
were a dead man, in all sobriety, boxed up againt the worms of the
grave.

Then the question rose of where to send him, and how. On the first part
of it the public was of undivided mind. No matter where he went, or in
what direction, let it be far. On the second division there was some
argument. Some held for shipping him by freight, as livestock, and some
were for express as the quickest way to the end of a long journey. For
the farther out of sight he could be carried in the shortest possible
time, they said, the better for all concerned.

There the station agent was called in to lend the counsel of his
official position. A man could not be shipped by freight if alive, he
said. He could be sent as a corpse is sent, by paying the rate of a fare
and a half and stowing him in the baggage-car with trunks and dogs. The
undertaker was of the same opinion, which he expressed gravely, with
becoming sadness and gloom.

Judge Thayer wrote the address on the shipping tag, the undertaker
tacked it on Seth Craddock's case, and then the amazed people of Ascalon
came forward surrounding the case, and read:

Chief of Police,
Kansas City, Missouri.

That was the consignee of the strangest shipment ever billed out of
Ascalon. People wondered what the chief of police would do with h