Newt stopped in his tracks.

"Have _you_ heard it?" he bellowed.

"What say?"

"I say, _have you heard it_?"

"Speak up! Speak up!" complained Uncle Dad. "You needn't be afraid of
_him_ hearin' you, Newt. He's been dead for six or eight hours."

"My God!" groaned Newt.

For the second time that morning he left Uncle Dad high and dry, and
started swiftly homeward. There was the possible, but remote chance that
his wife hadn't heard the news,--and if she had heard it, she'd hear
from him! He'd let her know what kind of a wife she was!

Never, within memory, had he failed to be the first person in Tinkletown
to hear the news, and here he was on this stupendous occasion, the last
of them all. And why? Because he had taken that one morning to perform a
peculiarly arduous and intensive bit of hard work up in the attic of his
wife's house. He had chosen the attic because Mrs. Spratt rather
vehemently had refused to let him use the parlour, or even the kitchen.
And all the time that he was up in the attic, working his head off
trying to teach his new fox terrier pup how to stand on its hind legs
and jump over a broom stick, this startling piece of news was sweeping
from one end of Tinkletown to the other.

Never, said Newt firmly, as he hurried homeward by the back
streets,--never would he do another day's work in his life, if this was
to be the result of honest toil. And what's more, he hadn't even
received a single word of praise from his wife when he descended from
the attic and triumphantly told her what he had accomplished,--he and
the pup between them--after three hours of solid, painstaking endeavour.

Mrs. Spratt had merely said: "If you could learn that pup how to split
firewood or milk a cow or repair the picket fence or something like
that, you might be worth your salt, Newt Spratt. As it is, you ain't."

As Newt turned gloomily into the alley leading up to his back gate, he
espied the Marshal of Tinkletown, Anderson Crow, leisurely approaching
from the opposite direction. Mr. Crow, on catching sight of Newt,
hastily removed something from his mouth and held it behind his back.
Perceiving that it was nobody but Newt Spratt, he restored the object to
his lips and began puffing away at it,--but not until he had sent a
furtive glance over his shoulder.

"What you doin' back here?" inquired Newt, somewhat offensively, as the
two drew closer together. "Lookin' fer clues?"

Anderson again removed the corn-co