"Honestly now, Thad, I give it up. If he's really guilty, as we
believe, why, of course, he'll not wait on the order of his going,
but skip out like a prairie fire, and we'll be shut of him. But
there's always the doubt. In fact, we never can be sure we've struck
the right nail on the head until we see Lu hitting the high places,
and never even looking back."

"I must read that wonderful article again," quoth the admiring Thad.
"It's simply great the way Jim's written it up, and I'm sure that chap
is bound to occupy an exalted place in newspaperdom down in New York
one of these days when luck comes to him, and he emigrates that way."

They scanned it line by line until they could almost repeat the
whole story by heart, it made such a great impression on them. Thad
seemed more than amused over the idea that the good folks from
Scranton would swallow it whole, and believe there was really a
Texan marshal in their midst, looking right and left for a desperate
character who had dropped down in that quiet and respectable
neighborhood, thinking he would be safe from molestation there.

"Why, Hugh," he went on to say, exuberantly, "all today I warrant
you hundreds of people here, women as well as boys and men, will
be scanning every party who happens to be wearing a felt bat anything
like the one Marshal Hastings is said to possess; and wondering if
the stranger from Mechanicsville, or Allandale, or any other old
place can be the wonderful Texan official, who according to Jim's
graphic account has notches cut on the stocks of both his big
revolvers to indicate just how many bad men he has been compelled
to lay low during the course of his long and thrilling public career.
Oh! I feel just as if I wanted to drop down and laugh till my sides