ed Elder Concannon on that very Monday when she had
brought him home from the Trimmins place. The old gentleman, although
conservative to a fault where money was concerned--his money, or
anybody's--agreed that one or two men should not be allowed to benefit
at the moral expense of their fellow townsmen.

That the liquor selling was causing a festering sore in the community
of Polktown could not be gainsaid. Sim Howell and two other boys in
their early teens had somehow obtained liquor, and had been picked up
in a frightful condition on the public street by Constable Poley Cantor.

The boys were made very ill by the quantity of liquor they had drunk,
and although they denied that they had bought the stuff at the hotel,
it was soon learned that the supply of spirits the boys had got hold
of, came from Lem Parraday's bar.

One of the town topers had purchased the half-gallon bottle and had hid
it in a barn, fearing to take it home. The boys had found it and dared
each other to taste the stuff.

"It's purty bad stuff 'at Lem sells, I allow," observed Walky Dexter.
"No wonder it settled them boys. It's got a 'kick' to it wuss'n
Josephus had that time the swarm of bees lit on him."

The town was ablaze with the story of the boys' escapade on Wednesday
afternoon when Janice came back from Middletown. She stopped at
Hopewell Drugg's store, which was a rendezvous for the male gossips of
the town, and Walky was holding forth upon the subject uppermost in the
public mind:

"Them consarned lettle skeezicks--I'd ha' trounced the hull on 'em if
they'd been mine."

"How would you have felt, Mr. Dexter, if they really were yours?" asked
Janice, who had been talking to 'Rill and Nelson Haley. "Suppose Sim
Howell were your boy? How would you feel to know that, at his age, he
had been intoxicated?"

"Jefers-pelters!" grunted Walky. "I reckon I wouldn't git
pigeon-breasted with pride over it--nossir!"

"Then don't make fun," admonished the girl, severely. "It is an
awful, _awful_ thing that the boys of Polktown can even get hold of
such stuff to make them so ill."

"That is right, Miss Janice," Hopewell said, busy with a customer.
"What else, Mrs. Massey?"

"That's all to-day, Hopewell. I hate to give you so big a bill, but
that's all I've got," said the druggist's wife, as she handed the
store-keeper a twenty-dollar gold certificate.

"He, he!" chuckled Walky, "Guess Massey wants all the change in town in
his ow