"Oh, all right," replied the watchman. "I had something important to
tell you; but if you don't want to hear it, very well; I kin keep it
to myself."

"Well, what is it? Out with it!"

"Why, I heard to-day that the kangaroo down at the Park in the city
can't use one of its hind legs. Rough on the Centennial, ain't it?"

Then, as the colonel withdrew in a condition of awful rage, the
watchman sauntered up the street to break the news to the rest of the
folks. On the next night a gang of burglars broke into Coffin's house
and ransacked it from top to bottom. Toward morning Coffin heard them;
and hastily dressing himself and seizing his revolver, he proceeded
down stairs. The burglars heard him coming and fled. Then the colonel
sprang his rattle and summoned the neighbors. When they arrived, the
colonel, in the course of conversation, made some remarks about the
perfect uselessness of night-watchmen. Thereupon Mr. Potts said,

"I saw that fellow Bones only an hour ago two squares above here, at
McGinnis's, routing McGinnis out to tell him that old cheese makes the
best bait for catfish."

Mr. Bones was reprimanded, but he remained upon what is facetiously
known as "the force." The borough cannot afford to dispense with the
services of such an original genius as he.

Our sheriff is a man of rather higher intelligence, but he also has a
singular capacity for perpetrating dreadful blunders. Over in the town