ave said them
very words to me a thousand times, Alf Reesling, and--Who's that coming
out of the post office?"

The group gradually turned to look up the street. Tinkletown is a slow
place. Its inhabitants do everything with a deliberation that suggests
the profoundest ennui. For example, a gentleman of Tinkletown rarely
raised his hat on meeting a lady. He invariably started to do so, but as
the ladies of the place were in the habit of moving with more celerity
than the gentlemen, he failed on most occasions to complete the
undertaking. What's the sense of takin' your hat off to a woman, he
would argue, if she's already got past you? So far as anybody knew,
there wasn't a woman in town with an eye in the back of her head.

"Looks like a stranger," said Newt Spratt.

"It certainly does," agreed Anderson. "Yes, I'm right," he added an
instant later.

The object of interest was crossing the street in the direction of the
Grand View Hotel. The group watched him with mild interest. In front of
the two-story frame building that seemed to stagger, or at least to
shrink, under the weight of its own importance, the stranger--a
man--paused to glance at one of the placards heralding the misfortune
and at the same time the far from parsimonious regard of the lady who
had been despoiled of a fashionable bulldog. Having perused the
singularly comprehensive notice, he deliberately tore it down, folded it
with some care, and stuck it into his overcoat pocket. Then he entered
the Grand View Hotel.

"Well, I'll be ding-blasted!" exclaimed Marshal Crow.

Mr. Reesling's animosity gave way to civic pride. "By jingo, Anderson,"
he cried, "if you want any help arrestin' that scoundrel, call on me!
Comin' around here defacin' things like that--he ought to go to jail."

Elmer K. Pratt, the photographer, voiced a time-tried but fruitless
criticism. "If you'd paste 'em up instead of tackin' 'em up, people
couldn't take 'em down like that. I've told you--"

"If you got any complaints to make about me, Elmer, you'd better make
'em to the town board and not to Alf Reesling and Newt Spratt,"
interrupted Marshal Crow testily. "Besides I do paste 'em up when I run
out of tacks."

He started off toward the Grand View, his head erect, his whiskers
bristling with indignation.

"Shall we go with you, Anderson?" inquired Alf.

"'Tain't necessary," replied the Marshal, "but you might go over and
wait for me in front of the hotel."

"If you n