"Not at all, sir—not at all. We are not book-agents, Mr. Marshal."
"Well, what are ye?"
"Metallurgists," said the florid one.
"I see, I see," said Anderson, who didn't see at all. "You started off just like a book-agent, er a lightnin'-rod salesman."
"My name is Bacon,—George Washington Bacon,—and my friend bears an even nobler monicker, if that be possible. He is Abraham Lincoln Bonaparte—a direct descendant of both of those illustrious gentlemen."
"You don't say! I didn't know Lincoln was any connection of Bonaparte's."
"It isn't generally known," the descendant informed him, with becoming modesty.
"Well, I'm seventy-three years old an' I never heard—"
"Seventy-three!" gasped Mr. Bonaparte, incredulously. "I don't believe it. You can't be more than fifty, Mr. Crow."
"Do you suppose I fought in the Union Army before I was born?" demanded Mr. Crow. "Where'd I get this G. A. R. badge, lemme ast you? An' you don't think the citizens of this here town would elect a ten-year-old boy to the responsible position of town marshal, do you? Why, gosh snap it, I been Marshal o' Tinkletown fer forty years—skippin' two years back in the nineties when I retired in favour of Ed Higgins, owin' to a misunderstandin' concernin' my health—an'—"