ried.
But--but--" and here his face lightened up in relief--"not fer a day er
two; so what's the use worryin'."

When the coroner arrived, soon after six o'clock, a jury was empanelled
and witnesses sworn. In ten minutes a verdict of suicide was returned
and the coroner was on his way back to Boggs City. He did not even know
that a hip had been dislocated. Anderson insisted upon a post-mortem
examination, but was laughed out of countenance by the officious M.D.

"I voted fer that fool last November," said Anderson wrathfully, as the
coroner drove off, "but you c'n kick the daylights out of me if I ever
do it ag'in. Look out there, Bud! What in thunder are you doin' with
them pistols? Doggone, ain't you got no sense? Pointin' 'em around that
way. Why, you're liable to shoot somebody--"

"Aw, them ain't pistols," scoffed Bud, his mouth full of something.
"They're bologny sausages. I ain't had nothin' to eat sence last night
and I'm hungry."

"Well, it's dark out here," explained Anderson, suddenly shuffling into
the jail. "I guess I'll put them fellers through the sweat box."

"The _what?_" demanded George Ray.

"The sweat-box--b-o-x, box. Cain't you hear?"

"I thought you used a cell."

"Thunderation, no! Nobody but country jakes call it a cell," said
Anderson in fine scorn.

The three prisoners scowled at him so fiercely and snarled so
vindictively when they asked him if they were to be starved to death,
that poor Anderson hurried home and commanded his wife to pack "a baskit
of bread and butter an' things fer the prisoners." It was nine o'clock
before he could make up his mind to venture back to the calaboose with
his basket. He spent the intervening hours in telling Rosalie and Bonner
about the shocking incident at the jail and in absorbing advice from the
clear-headed young man from Boston.

"I'd like to go with you to see those fellows, Mr. Crow," was Bonner's
rueful lament. "But the doctor says I must be quiet until this
confounded thing heals a bit. Together, I think we could bluff the whole
story out of those scoundrels."

"Oh, never you fear," said the marshal; "I'll learn all there is to be
learnt. You jest ask Alf Reesling what kind of a pumper I am."

"Who is Alf Reesling?"

"Ain't you heerd of him in Boston? Why, every temperance lecturer that
comes here says he's the biggest drunkard in the world. I supposed his
reputation had got to Boston by this time. He's been sober only once in
twenty-