you know it's impossible to buy a good eatin' or cookin' apple
in this town today, Harry Squires?"

"You don't say so! In spite of the big crop last fall?"

"You could buy all you wanted last week, by the bushel or peck or
barrel,--finest, juiciest apples you ever laid your eyes on."

"Well, I don't like apples anyway, so it doesn't mean much in my life."

Anderson was silent for a moment or two, contemplating his foot with
singular intentness.

"Was you ever drunk on hard cider?" he inquired at last,--transferring
his gaze to the rapidly moving hand that held the pencil.

The reporter jabbed a period,--or "full stop," as they call it in a
certain form of literature,--in the middle of a sentence, and looked up
with sudden interest.

"Yes," he said, with considerable force. "I'll never forget it. You can
get tighter on hard cider than anything else I know of."

"Well, there you are," exclaimed the Marshal, banging his gnarled fist
on the arm of the chair. "And as far as I c'n make out, there ain't no
law ag'inst cider stayin' in the barrel long enough to get good and
hard, an' what's more, there ain't no law ag'ainst sellin' cider, hard
or sweet, is there?"

"I get your point, Anderson. And I also get your deductions concerning
the mysterious disappearance of all the apples in Tinkletown. Apparently
we are to have a shortage of dried apples this year, with an overflow of
hard cider instead. By George, it's interesting, to say the least. Looks
as though an apple orchard is likely to prove more valuable than a gold
mine, doesn't it?"

"Yes, sir! 'Specially if you've got trees that bear in the fall. Fall
apples make the best cider. They ain't so mushy. And as fer the feller
that owns a cider-press, why, dog-gone it, he ought to be as rich as
Crowsis."

"I seem to recall that you have a cider-press on your farm on Crow's
Mountain,--and a whacking good orchard, too. Are you thinking of
resigning as Marshal of Tinkletown?"

"What say?"

"I see you're not," went on Harry. "Of course you understand you can't
very well manufacture hard cider and sell it and still retain your
untarnished reputation as a defender of the law."

"I'm not figurin' on makin' hard cider," said Anderson, with some
irritation. "You don't _make_ hard cider, Harry. It makes itself. All
you do is to rack the apple juice off into a barrel, or something, with
a little yeast added, and then leave it to do the work. It ferments an'
then, if yo