ent. A
miniature monument of rock faintly stained with copper rose in the
center of the window, and a buffalo skull lent a note of historic
interest.

The walls inside were decorated with the Club's slogan, "Boost for
Prouty." The undertaker's chairs were still doing duty, since there was
so much truth in that person's plaintive wail that "the climate was so
damned healthy that nobody ever died," there was seldom other use for
them.

There was a pine table upon a raised platform, behind which Hiram
Butefish remained, as before, the Club's honored President.

In the corner was a stove which had been donated by the Methodist
minister, because, presumably, of a refractory grate which it was found
impossible to operate without profanity.

Into these comfortable and spacious quarters, a goodly number of
Prouty's representative citizens came singly and in squads upon the
occasion of this important meeting.

Each member had kept his own solution of Prouty's problem closely
guarded, so no man knew what his neighbor had to offer until that one's
turn came to divulge it. In truth, it had been a long time since a
meeting of such piquancy and interest had been called.

After some little preliminary business, Hiram Butefish, with a candor
which never before had distinguished his public utterances upon this
subject, declared flatly that Prouty was in a precarious, not to say
desperate, condition. The county treasury was empty, the town treasury
was empty, and the warrants of either had little more value than the
stock certificates of an abandoned gold mine. What were they going to do
about it? Should they sit quietly and starve like a lost tribe
wandering in the desert? Did they wish to see their wives naked and
their children hungry? No! Mr. Butefish smote the table until the crack
in the water pitcher lengthened. Then by all that was Great and Good,
somebody had to think of something!

Mr. Butefish had only said what everybody knew, but his manner of saying
it sent a chill over every one present.

"Doc" Fussel, whose sales during the day had been a package of rat
poison and a bottle of painkiller, looked like a lemon that has lain too
long in the window, when he arose and diffidently offered his suggestion
for the relief of Prouty. The doctor's voice when he was frightened had
the rich sonorous tones of a mouse squeaking in the wall, and now as he
ventured the suggestion that Prouty's hope lay in raising peppermint,
his