“Are you goin’ after ’em, Anderson?” asked old Mr. Borton, with unfailing faith in the town’s chief officer.

“Them fellers is in Asia by this time,” vouchsafed Mr. Crow scornfully, forgetting that less than a week had elapsed since the robbery.  He flecked a fly from his detective’s badge and then struck viciously at the same insect when it straightway attacked his G.A.R. emblem.

“I doubt it,” said Mr. Lamson.  “Like as not they’re right here in this State, mebby in this county.  You can’t tell about them slick desperadoes.  Hello, Harry!  Has anything more been heard from the train robbers?” Harry Squires approached the group with something like news in his face.

“I should say so,” he said.  “The darned cusses robbed the State Express last night at Vanderskoop and got away with thirteen hundred dollars.  Say, they’re wonders!  The engineer says they’re only five of them.”

“Why, gosh dern it, Vanderskoop’s only the fourth station west of Boggs City!” exclaimed Anderson Crow, pricking up his official ear.  “How in thunder do you reckon they got up here in such a short time?”

“They probably stopped off on their way back from Asia,” drily remarked Mr. Lamson; but it passed unnoticed.

“Have you heard anything more about the show, Harry?” asked Jim Borum.  “Is she sure to be here?” What did Tinkletown care about the train robbers when a “show” was headed that way?

“Sure.  The press comments are very favourable,” said Harry.  “They all say that Miss Marmaduke, who plays Rosalind, is great.  We’ve got a cut of her and, say, she’s a beauty.  I can see myself sitting in the front row next Thursday night, good and proper.”

“Say, Anderson, I think it’s a dern shame fer Mark Riley to go ’round pastin’ them reward bills over the show pictures,” growled Isaac Porter.  “He ain’t got a bit o’ sense.”

With one accord the crowd turned to inspect two adjacent bill boards.  Mark had either malignantly or insanely pasted the reward notices over the nether extremities of Rosalind as she was expected to appear in the Forest of Arden.  There was a period of reflection on the part of an outraged constituency.

“I don’t see how he’s goin’ to remove off them reward bills without scraping off her legs at the same time,” mused Anderson Crow in perplexity.  Two housewives of Tinkletown suddenly deserted the group and entered the store.  And so it was that the train robbers were forgotten for the time being.

But Marshal Crow’s reputation as a horse-thief taker and general suppressor of crime constantly upbraided him.  It seemed to call upon him to take steps toward the capture of the train robbers.  All that afternoon he reflected.  Tinkletown, seeing his mood, refrained from breaking in upon it.  He was allowed to stroke his whiskers in peace and to think to his heart’s content.  By nightfall his face had become an inscrutable mask, and then it was known that the President of Bramble County’s