“You’re a mean sort of a man, now, ain’t you?”

“Well, Mr. Maginn,” replied Potts, “I really didn’t know Mr. Dingus was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way.”

“Oh, it isn’t that,” said the coroner—­“it isn’t that.  I don’t mind your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn’t you kill him while you were at it, and give me a chance?  You want to see me starve, don’t you?  I wish you’d a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his liver, and then I’d a had my regular fees.  But as it is, I have all the bother and get nothing.  I’d starve to death if all men were like you.”

And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn rather more than Mr. Dingus.

* * * * *

Coroner Maginn’s condition, however, is one of chronic discontent.  Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,

“Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn.”

“Dull!  Well, that’s just no name for it.  This is the deadest town I ever—­Well, exceptin’ Jim Busby’s tumblin’ off the market-house last month, there hasn’t been a decent accident in this place since last summer.  How’m I goin’ to live, I want to know?  In other countries people keep things movin’.  There are murders and coal-oil explosions and roofs fallin’ in—­’most always somethin’ lively to afford a coroner a chance.  But here!  Why, I don’t get ’nough fees in a year to keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers.  I don’t—­now, that’s the honest truth.”

“That does seem discouraging.”

“And then the worst of it is a man’s friends won’t stand by him.  There’s Doolan, the coroner in the next county.  He found a drowned man up in the river just beyond the county line.  I ought to have had the first shy at the body by rights, for I know well enough he fell in from this county and then skeeted up with the tide.  But no; Doolan would hold the inquest; and do you believe that man actually wouldn’t float the remains down the river so’s I could sit on ’em after he’d got through?  Actually took ’em out and buried ’em, although I offered to go halves with him on my fees if he would pass the body down this way.  That’s a positive fact.  He refused.  Now, what do you think of a man like that?  He hasn’t got enough soul in him to be worth preachin’ to.  That’s my opinion.”

“It wasn’t generous.”

“No, sir.  Why, there’s Stanton come home from Peru with six mummies that he dug out of some sepulchre in that country.  They look exackly like dried beef.  Now, my view is that I ought to sit on those things.  They’re human beings; nobody ’round here knows what they died of.  The law has a right to know.  Stanton hasn’t got a doctor’s certificate about ’em, and I’m sworn to look after all dead people that can’t account for bein’ dead, or that are suspicioned of dyin’ by foul play.  I could have made fifty dollars out of those deceased Peruvians, and I ought to’ve done it.  But