with a shriek that silenced the clink of
glasses in the distillery, against the side door of which the
something lay. They crowded out, glasses in hand, to see what it was.

"Only a dead tramp," said some one, and the crowd went back to the
warm saloon, where the barrels lay in rows on the racks. The clink of
glasses and shouts of laughter came through the peep-hole in the door
into the dark hallway as Policeman Schultz bent over the stiff, cold
shape. Some one had called him.

"Denny," he said, tugging at his sleeve.

"Denny, come. Your time is up. I am here." Denny never stirred. The
policeman looked up, white in the face.

"My God!" he said, "he's dead. But he kept his date."

And so he had. Denny the Robber was dead. Rum and exposure and the
"rheumatiz" had killed him. Policeman Schultz kept his word, too, and
had him taken to the station on a stretcher.

"He was a bad penny," said the saloon-keeper, and no one in Jewtown
was found to contradict him.

ROVER'S LAST FIGHT

The little village of Valley Stream nestles peacefully among the woods
and meadows of Long Island. The days and the years roll by
uneventfully within its quiet precincts. Nothing more exciting than
the arrival of a party of fishermen from the city, on a vain hunt for
perch in the ponds that lie hidden among its groves and feed the
Brooklyn waterworks, troubles the every-day routine of the village.
Two great railroad wrecks are remembered thereabouts, but these are
already ancient history. Only the oldest inhabitants know of the
earlier one. There hasn't been as much as a sudden death in the town
since, and the constable and chief of police--probably one and the
same person--haven't turned an honest or dishonest penny in the whole
course of their official existence. All of which is as it ought to be.

But at last something occurred that ought not to have been. The
village was aroused at daybreak by the intelligence that a robbery had
been committed overnight, and a murder. The house of Gabriel Dodge, a
well-to-do farmer, had been sacked by thieves, who left in their trail
the farmer's murdered dog. Rover was a collie, large for his kind, and
quite as noisy as the rest of them. He had been left as an outside
guard, according to Farmer Dodge's awkward practice. Inside, he might
have been of use by alarming the folks when the thieves tried to get
in. But they had only to fear his bark; his bite was harmless.

The whole of Valley Str