“Say,” said “Blootch” so loudly that the crowd felt like remonstrating with him, “what’s the use of all this?”

No one responded.  No one was equal to it on such short notice.

“We’ve got to do something besides stand around and whisper,” he said.  “We’ve got to find Rosalie Gray.”

“But good gosh!” ejaculated Isaac Porter, “they’ve got purty nigh a day’s start of us.”

“Well, that don’t matter.  Anderson would do as much for us.  Let’s get a move on.”

“But where in thunder will we hunt?” murmured George Ray.

“To the end of the earth,” announced Blootch, inflating his chest and slapping it violently, a strangely personal proceeding, which went unnoticed.  He had reached the conclusion that his chance to be a hero was at hand and not to be despised.  Here was the opportunity to outstrip all of his competitors in the race for Rosalie’s favour.  It might be confessed that, with all his good intentions, his plans were hopelessly vague.  The group braced up a little at the sound of his heroic words.

“But the derned thing’s round,” was the only thing Ed Higgins could find to say.  Ed, as fickle as the wind, was once more deeply in love with Rosalie, having switched from Miss Banks immediately after the visit to Colonel Randall’s.

“Aw, you go to Guinea!” was Blootch’s insulting reply.  Nothing could be more disparaging than that, but Ed failed to retaliate.  “Let’s appoint a committee to wait on Anderson and find out what he thinks we’d better do.”

“But Anderson ain’t—­” began some one.  Blootch calmly waived him into silence.

“What he wants is encouragement, and not a lot of soup and broth and lemonade.  He ain’t sick.  He’s as able-bodied as I am.  Every woman in town took soup to him this noon.  He needs a good stiff drink of whiskey and a committee to cheer him up.  I took a bottle up to ’Rast Little last night and he acted like another man.”

At last it was decided that a committee should first wait on Anderson, ascertaining his wishes in the premises, and then proceed to get at the bottom of the mystery.  In forming this committee the wise men of the town ignored Mr. Peabody, and he might have been left off completely had he not stepped in and appointed himself chairman.

The five good men and true descended upon the marshal late in the afternoon, half fearful of the result, but resolute.  They found him slowly emerging from his spell of lassitude.  He greeted them with a solemn nod of the head.  Since early morning he had been conscious of a long stream of sympathisers passing through the house, but it was not until now that he felt equal to the task of recognising any of them.

His son Roscoe had just finished telling him the story of the abduction.  Roscoe’s awestruck tones and reddened eyes carried great weight with them, and for the tenth time that day he had his sisters in tears.  With each succeeding repetition the details grew until at last there was but little of the original event remaining, a fact which his own family properly overlooked.