rally of an observant nature. While he was in
Egypt he was keeping his eyes particularly wide open. He was looking
for two men wanted by the state. Mr. Bangs was the deputy warden who had
gone up to the summit of Devilbrow in order to view the landscape o'er
and pass the word to Mr. Wagg. Mr. Bangs rode along every highway
and byway, day after day, not missing a trick. He was not especially
sanguine in regard to locating the missing convicts in that section,
but he was obeying the warden's orders; after a day or so he was also
obeying an impulse to satisfy his curiosity in lines quite apart from
his official quest.

He spent his nights at Files's tavern and grabbed his meals wherever he
happened to be.

But after a time he found that housewives were unwilling to give him
anything to eat. He was sure that they had not soured on him because he
was a state catchpole. When he first arrived in town and gave out the
news of his mission and issued a general call for tips he was welcomed
heartily by everybody; the women, especially, hoped that he would find
the villains and put them where they could not threaten unprotected
females. Mr. Bangs had not been able to spend his money for food at
farmhouses; the women would not accept any pay, and gave him their best.

However all at once they could not be induced to give food or even to
sell it. They acted as if they did not care to be bothered; some of them
declared that they were too busy to do cooking. They would not allow Mr.
Bangs to stick his nose into their houses; they snapped refusal at him
from behind doors only partially opened and foot-braced.

Men with whom Bangs conversed wore an air of abstraction. They plainly
were not interested in Mr. Bangs or in the convicts whom he was
pursuing. He tackled them on all sorts of subjects, hoping to hit on the
topic which was absorbing so much of their attention. He went so far as
to ask them bluntly what they were carrying on their minds besides hair.
Those who were not surly looked scared.

Even the barn doors were no longer frankly open. There was a mysterious
sort of subsurface stir everywhere. There was expectancy that was ill
disguised. Mr. Bangs, a stranger, perceived that strangers, for some
unexplained reason, had ceased to be popular in Egypt. One day a man
gruffly told him that detectives would do well to go off and do their
detecting in some other place. That was pretty blunt, and Mr. Bangs
informed his helper that