daughter, because that simple circumstance of origin robbed the
society's roster of a new name.

Anderson Crow, at the age of forty-nine, had a proud official record
behind him and a guaranteed future ahead. Doubtless it was of this that
he was thinking, as he leaned pensively against the town hitching-rack
and gingerly chewed the blade of wire-grass which dangled even below the
chin whiskers that had been with him for twenty years. The faraway
expression in his watery-blue eyes gave evidence that he was as great
reminiscently as he was personally. So successful had been his career as
a law preserver, that of late years no evil-doer had had the courage to
ply his nefarious games in the community. The town drunkard, Alf
Reesling, seldom appeared on the streets in his habitual condition,
because, as he dolefully remarked, he would deserve arrest and
confinement for "criminal negligence," if for nothing else. The
marshal's fame as a detective had long since escaped from the narrow
confines of Tinkletown. He was well known at the county seat, and on no
less than three occasions had his name mentioned in the "big city"
papers in connection with the arrest of notorious horse-thieves.

And now the whole town was trembling with a new excitement, due to the
recognition accorded her triple official. On Monday morning he had
ventured forth from his office in the long-deserted "calaboose,"
resplendent in a brand-new nickel-plated star. By noon everybody in town
knew that he was a genuine "detective," a member of the great
organisation known as the New York Imperial Detective Association; and
that fresh honour had come to Tinkletown through the agency of a
post-revolution generation. The beauty of it all was that Anderson never
lost a shred of his serenity in explaining how the association had
implored him to join its forces, even going so far as to urge him to