g. I'm only accusin' you of
havin' something in your pocket. No harm in that, is there?"

The deacon hesitated for a minute. Then he made a determined effort to
temporize.

"And what's more," he said, "my wife's hat's comin' back into style
before long, anyhow. It's just as I keep on tellin' her. The styles
kinder go in circles, an' if she waits long enough they'll get back to
the kind she's wearin', and then she'll be the first woman in Tinkletown
to have the very up-to-datest style in hats,--'way ahead of anybody
else,--and it will be as good as new, too, you bet, after the way she's
been savin' it."

"Now I know why you got your pockets stuffed full of things,--eggs,
maybe, or hick'ry nuts, or--whatever it is you got in 'em. It's because
you're tryin' to save a piece of wrappin' paper or a bag, or the wear
and tear on a basket. No wonder you got so much money you don't know how
to spend it."

"And as for me gettin' a new suit of clothes," pursued the deacon,
doggedly, "if times don't get better the chances are I'll have to be
buried in the suit I got on this minute. I never knowed times to be so
hard--"

The marshal interrupted him. "You go in an' pay up what you owe fer the
_Banner_ an' I'll wait here till you come out."

Deacon Rank appeared to reflect. "Come to think of it, I guess I'll stop
in on my way back from the post office. Ten or fifteen minutes--"

He stopped short, a fixed intent look in his sharp little eyes. His gaze
was directed past Anderson's head at some object down the street. Then,
quite abruptly and without even the ceremony of a hasty "good-bye," he
bolted into the _Banner_ office, slamming the door in the marshal's
face.

"Well, I'll be dog-goned!" burst from the lips of the astonished Mr.
Crow. "I never knowed him to change his mind so quick as that in all my
life,--or so often. What the dickens--"

Indignation succeeded wonder at this instant, cutting off his audible
reflections. Snapping his jaws together, he laid a resolute hand on the
doorknob. Just as he turned it and was on the point of stamping in after
the deacon, his eye fell upon an approaching figure--the figure of a
woman. If it had not been for the hat she was wearing, he would have
failed to recognize her at once. But there was no mistaking the hat.

"Hi!" called out the wearer of the too familiar object. Marshal Crow let
go of the door knob and stared at the lady in sheer stupefaction.

Mrs. Rank's well-preserved