en. An undertaking of such scope was
too big to sequester in any man's back yard.

Whether the rainmaker believed in his formula, or whether he was a plain
fraud who was a little sharper on weather conditions than most men, and
good on an estimate of a drouth's duration, he seemed to be doing
something to earn his money. Day and night he kept something burning in
a little tin stove with a length of pipe that came just above the corn,
sending up a smoke that went high toward the cloudless sky before the
wind began to blow in the early morning hours, and after it ceased at
evening, after its established plan. During the day this smoke dispersed
very generally over town, causing some coughing and sneezing, and not a
little swearing and scoffing.

Sulphur, mainly, the doctor and Druggist Gray pronounced the chemical to
be. It was a sacrilege, the Baptist preacher declared, an offering to
Satan, from the smell of it, rather than a scientific assault upon the
locked heavens to burst open the windows and let out a dash of rain. If
the effort of the mysterious stranger brought anything at all, it would
bring disaster, the preacher declared. A cyclone, very likely, and
lightning, in expression of the Almighty's wrath.

Those who did not accept it wrathfully, as the preacher, or resentfully,
as Druggist Gray, from whom the experimenter bought none of his
chemicals, or humorously, as the doctor and many of higher intelligence,
had a sort of sneaking hope that something might come of it. If the rain
man could stir up a commotion and fetch a soaker, it would be the
salvation of that country. The range would revive, streams would flow,
water would come again into dry wells, and the new farmers who had come
in would be given hope to hang on another year and by their trade keep
Ascalon from perishing utterly.

But mainly the disposition was to laugh. Judge Thayer was a well-meaning
man, but easy. He believed he was bringing a doctor in to cure the
country's sickness, where all of his hopes were staked out in town lots,
when he had brought only a quack. A hundred dollars, even if the faker
made no more, was pretty good pay for seven days' work, they said. A
dollar's worth of sulphur would cover his expenses. And if it happened
to turn out a good guess, and a rain did blow up on time, Judge Thayer
was just fool enough to give the fellow a letter that would help him put
his fraud through in another place.

It did not appear, as the d