"Sakes alive! Fifty? For goodness' sake, Harry, are you sure?"
"Not exactly. It may be sixty," amended Harry. "We could easily find out just how many—"
"Never mind! Never mind!" cried Anderson, recovering himself. "If it's as bad as all that, we just got to keep still about it. I wouldn't allow you to throw mud at her if she's been carryin' on with only one man, but if there's fifty or—But, gosh a' mighty, Harry, it ain't possible. A woman as homely as Minnie—why, dog-gone it, a woman as homely as she is simply couldn't be bad no matter how much she wanted to. It ain't human nature. She—"
"Hold your horses, Anderson," broke in Harry, after a perplexed stare. "I guess you're jumping at conclusions. I didn't say—"
"There ain't going to be no scandal in this campaign. If Minnie Stitzenberg—German or no German—has been—"
"It isn't the kind of scandal you think it is," protested Harry. "What I'm trying to tell you is that it was Minnie Stitzenberg who got that guy up here from New York two years ago to sell stock in the Salt Water Gold Company, and stung fifty or sixty of our wisest citizens to the extent of thirty dollars apiece. I happen to know that Minnie got five dollars for every sucker that was landed. That guy was her cousin and she gave him a list of the easiest marks in town. If I remember correctly, you were one of them, Anderson. She got something like two hundred dollars for giving him the proper steer, and that's what I meant when I said there were fifty or sixty men in the case."
"Well, I'll be ding-blasted!"
"And do you know what she did with her ill-gotten gains?"
Anderson could only shake his head.
"She went up to Boggs City and took singing lessons. Now you know the worst."