The two strangers were quite near by this time—near enough, in fact, to cause Miss Becker to lower her voice as she said:

"They're awfully nice looking gentlemen, ain't they?"

Evidently Mr. Crow's explanation had satisfied her, for she was smiling with considerable vivacity as she made the remark. Up to that instant she had neglected her back hair. Now she gracefully, lingeringly fingered it to see if it was properly in place. In doing so, she managed to drop her parasol.

To her chagrin, Marshal Crow took that occasion to behave in a most incredible manner. It is quite probable that he forgot himself. In any case, he picked up the parasol and returned it to her, snatching it, in fact, almost from beneath the foot of the nearest stranger.

"Oh, thank you—thank you kindly, Mr. Crow," she giggled, and proceeded to let it slip out of her fingers again. "Oh, how stupid! How perfectly clumsy—"

"Did I hear you addressed as Mr. Crow?" inquired the foremost of the two strangers, halting abruptly. He was a tall, florid man of forty or thereabouts, with a deep and not unpleasant voice. His companion was also tall but very gaunt and sallow. He wore huge round spectacles, hooked over his ears. Both were well dressed, one in grey flannel, the other in blue serge.

"You did," said the town marshal, straightening up. "You dropped your umbrell' ag'in, Sue," he added. "Yes, sir, my name's Crow."

Miss Becker waited a few seconds and then picked up the parasol.

"The celebrated Anderson Crow?" asked the man with the glasses, opening his eyes a little wider.

 "The celebrated Anderson Crow?" asked the man with the glasses

Mr. Crow suddenly remembered that he was in his shirt-sleeves. His faded blue sack-coat—"undress," he called it—hung limp and neglected on the gate-post.

"More or less," he admitted, wishing to goodness he had on his best pair of "galluses" instead of the ones he was wearing.

"Marshal of Tinkletown, I believe?" said the florid stranger, raising his eyebrows slightly.

"Excuse me," said Anderson, conscious of a certain disparaging note in the speaker's voice, which he quite naturally laid to the "galluses." Without turning his back toward them he 

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