clear conscience beats a pet dog, when your conscience feels nervous.
Now I am going to lay this dog in the barrel of dried apples, where your
cat sleeps, and give him a little rest, and I will give you four minutes
to tell me all you know, and you will have three minutes on your hands
with nothing to say. Unbutton your lip and give your teeth a vacation."

"Well, you _have_ got gall. However, I don't know but you are right that
woman that hurt the dog. Still, it may have been her way of petting a
strange dog. We should try to look upon the charitable side of peoples'
eccentricities. But say, I want to ask you if you have seen anything of
my man that delivers groceries. Saturday night I sent him over to your
house to deliver some things, about ten o'clock, and he has not showed
up since. What do you think has become of him?"

"Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Saturday night, about ten o'clock
we heard somebody in the back yard, around the kitchen door, just as we
were going to bed, and Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the church
money he had collected last Sunday. He had got to turn it over the next
day, to pay the minister's expenses on his vacation, and it made him
nervous to have it around. I peeked out of the window and saw the man,
and I told Pa, and Pa got a revolver and began shooting through the
wire screen to the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket and
begin to climb over the fence real sudden, and I went out and began to
groan, as though somebody was dying in the alley, and I brought in
the basket with the mackerel and green corn, and told Pa that from the
groaning out there I guess he had killed the grocery delivery man, and
I wanted Pa to go out and help me hunt for the body, but he said he was
going to take the midnight train to go out west on some business, and Pa
lit out. I guess your man was scared and went one way and Pa was scared
and went the other. Won't they be astonished when they meet each other
on the other side of the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet,
if he gives Pa any sass. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as soon
eat as to kill a man."

"Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic or something, and
will come back when he gets sober, but how are your theatricals getting
along?" asked the grocery man.

"O, that scheme is all busted," said the boy. "At least until the
minister gets back from his vacation. The congregation has noticed a red
spo