"Well, all I got to say is I never felt more like takin' a drink. An' you'll feel like it, too, when you hear the latest. Maybe you'll drop dead er somethin'. Serve you right, too, by jiminy, the way you keep insinyating about—"
"Go on an' tell me. Don't talk all day. Just tell me. That's all you're called on to do."
"Well," sputtered Alf. "Some one's come out ag'in you fer marshal. I seen the item they're printin' over at the Banner office. Seen the name an' everything."
Anderson blinked two or three times, reached for his whiskers and missed them, and then roared:
"You must be crazy, Alf! By thunder, I hate to do it, but I'll have to put you in a safe—"
"You just wait an' see if I'm—"
"—safe place where you can't harm nobody. You oughtn't to be runnin' round at large like this. Here! Leggo my arm! What the dickens are you tryin' to—"
"Come on! I'll show you!" exclaimed Alf. "I'll take you right around to the Banner office an'—say, didn't you know the People's Party nominated a full ticket las' night over at Odd Fellers' Hall?"
Anderson submitted himself to be led—or rather dragged—around the corner into Sickle Street.
Several business men aroused from mid-morning lassitude allowed their chairs to come down with a thump upon divers mercantile porches, and fell in behind the two principal citizens of Tinkletown. Something terrible must have happened or Marshal Crow wouldn't be summoned in any such imperative manner as this.