“I tell you, ’Miah,” sniffed Buzzell, “this here job is jest about played out. A dollar-sixty a day ain’t no livin’ pay for a hard-workin’ man, and that’s all we git outside commissions on the fines the jedge imposes, and the deputy sheruff gits the biggest whack at them. We have to be pacified with what comes outer the little end o’ the horn. Yis-tidday my share was thutty-two cents, and so fur to-day we ain’t nabbed only one motor-cycle feller who come through by accident, havin’ got off the road to Damascus. I’m gittin’ discouraged.”

Constable Small made a final poke at the pipe bowl, and glanced down at the complaining individual. “Never knowed you to tackle any job that you didn’t git discouraged over in a short time, Silas,” he averred contemptuously. “Gittin’ discouraged is your long suit. You’ve been discouraged all your life.”

Buzzell moved his slouching shoulders resentfully. “Mebbe that’s so, ’Miah, but I ain’t never had no luck, like some folks. When I was swore in as constable and put on this job, there was an av’rage of eighteen or twenty merchines a day that went through town regardless of speed regerlations. Business was lively, and I sorter guessed my luck had turned. But now them there automobile fellers has got wise and sent out warnin’s and posted notices in all the garrages round about cautionin’ folks to keep away from Greenbush, and they’re goin’ round by the way of Damascus or Cherryfield, and leavin’ us to twiddle our thumbs. My opinion, it’s hurt the town, too; Greenbush is deader’n a salted herrin’.”

Small lifted a broganed foot and struck a match on the leg of his trousers, after which he held it up until his wheezing pipe was lit.

“Better not go makin’ that kind of talk in the hearin’ of Jedge Wiggin,” he warned, pulling hard at the rebellious corncob. “If you done so, he’d tell you what in a hurry, and you’d lose your badge so quick it’d make your head swim. You know him, Silas. He ain’t got no use for automobiles nohow, and when he announced that he perposed to enforce the speed regerlations without fear or favor, he sartainly meant it. He’d slap a fine onter the President of the United States if he was to go scootin’ through town faster’n the speed limit allows.”

“Mebbe he would,” said Buzzell. “He’s so hard-headed and sot it would be just like him. Jest because he’s alwus been a hoss owner and a hoss-man, he’s down on automobiles in gen’ral and ev’rybody that has anything to do with ’em. I reckon that’s whyhe wants to be representative to the legislator, he wants to go there to 

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