this kinder
weather. If I got to go to jail, I want to do it right away. It's
cruelty to animals to leave me standin' out there with nothing on my
feet but carpet-slippers. Come on an'--"

"Come in to the fire an' get warm, Lucius dear," called out his wife, as
shrinking and as timid as a whipped child. "I forgive you. Julie!
Jul-ie! Come down here an' help me get some hot coffee an' something to
eat fer your Pa."

"I--I guess we'd better be goin', Harry," said Marshall Crow
uncomfortably. "I got to disperse that crowd o' women out there in the
street. Good night, Lucius. Night, Mrs. Fry. If you ever need me, all
yer got to do is just send word."

Lucius followed him to the door, and would have gone out into the night
with him if the Marshal had not deliberately pushed him back.

"You--you ain't goin' to desert me, are you?" whispered Lucius fiercely.

The Marshal leaned over and whispered to Lucius.

"If all the other men in this here town had as soft a snap as you've
got, Lucius Fry, they'd hate to die worse'n ever, because they'd know
they'd never git back into heaven ag'in."

THE VEILED LADY AND THE SHADOW

A veiled lady is not, in ordinary circumstances, an object of concern to
anybody. Circumstances, however, are sometimes so extraordinary that a
veiled lady becomes an object of concern to everybody. If the old-time
novelists are to be credited, an abundantly veiled lady is more than a
source of interest; she is the vital, central figure in a mystery that
continues from week to week, or month to month, as the case may be,
until the last chapter is reached and she turns out to be the person you
thought she was all the time.

Now, the village of Tinkletown is a slow-going, somnolent sort of place
in which veils are worn by old ladies who wish to enjoy a pleasant
snooze during the sermon without being caught in the act. That any one
should wear a veil with the same regularity and the same purpose that
she wears the dress which renders the remainder of her person invisible
is a circumstance calculated to excite the curiosity of even the most
indifferent observers in the village of Tinkletown.

So when the news travelled up and down Main Street, and off into the
side-streets, and far out beyond Three Oaks Cemetery to the new division
known as Oak Park, wherein reside four lonely pioneer families, that
the lady who rented Mrs. Nixon's house for the month of September was in
a "perpetual state of obsc