“That’s what it is,” said Harry Squires, the editor, with a superior air.  “They play ‘As You Like It,’ by Shakespeare.  It’s a swell show.  We got out the hand bills over at the office.  They’ll be distributed in town to-morrow, and a big batch of them will be sent over to the summer places across the river.  The advance agent says it is a high-class performance and will appeal particularly to the rich city people up in the mountains.  It’s a sort of open-air affair, you know.”  And then Mr. Squires was obliged to explain to his fellow-townsmen all the known details in connection with the approaching performance of “As You Like It” by the Boothby Company, set for Tinkletown on the following Thursday night.  Hapgood’s Grove had been selected by the agent as the place in which the performance should be given.

“Don’t they give an afternoon show?” asked Mrs. Williams.

“Sure not,” said Harry curtly.  “It isn’t a museum.”

“Of course not,” added Anderson Crow reflectively.  “It’s a troupe.”

The next morning, bright and early, Mark Riley fared forth with paste and brush.  Before noon, the board fences, barns and blank walls of Tinkletown flamed with great red and blue letters, twining in and about the portraits of Shakespeare, Manager Boothby, Rosalind, Orlando, and an extra king or two in royal robes.  A dozen small boys spread the hand bills from the Banner presses, and Tinkletown was stirred by the excitement of a sensation that had not been experienced since Forepaugh’s circus visited the county seat three years before.  It went without saying that Manager Boothby would present “As You Like It” with an “unrivalled cast.”  He had “an all-star production,” direct from “the leading theatres of the universe.”

When Mark Riley started out again in the afternoon for a second excursion with paste and brush, “slapping up” small posters with a celerity that bespoke extreme interest on his part, the astonished populace feared that he was announcing a postponement of the performance.  Instead of that, however, he was heralding the fact that the Hemisphere Trunk Line and Express Company would gladly pay ten thousand dollars reward for the “apprehension and capture” of the men who robbed one of its richest trains a few nights before, seizing as booty over sixty thousand dollars in money, besides killing two messengers in cold blood.  The great train robbery occurred in the western part of the State, hundreds of miles from Tinkletown, but nearly all of its citizens had read accounts of the deed in the weekly paper from Boggs City.

“I seen the item about it in Mr. Gregory’s New York paper,” said Anderson Crow to the crowd at Lamson’s.

“Gee whiz, it must ‘a’ been a peach!” said Isaac Porter, open-mouthed and eager for details.  Whereupon Marshal Crow related the story of the crime which stupefied the world on the morning of July 31st.  The express had been held up in an isolated spot by a half-dozen masked men.  A safe had been shattered and the contents confiscated, the perpetrators vanishing as completely as if aided by Satan himself.  The authorities were baffled.  A huge reward was offered in the hope that it might induce some discontented underling in the band to expose his comrades.