causing, as near as I can
come to it from his explanation--which is technical and thoroughly
scientific, Morgan--" this severely, as if to rebuke the grin that
dawned on Morgan's face. "Causing, as near as I can come to it, a
dispersion of the hot belt of atmosphere, this superheated belt that
encircles the globe in this spot like a flame of fire, causing a break
in this belt, so to speak, drilling a hole in it, bringing down the
upper frigid air."

Judge Thayer looked with triumph at Morgan when he delivered this,
sweating a great deal, as if the effort to elucidate this scientific
man's methods of conspiring against nature to beat it out of a rain were
equal to a ten-mile walk in the summer sun.

"Yes, sir," said Morgan, with more respect in his voice and manner than
he felt. "And then what happens?"

"Why, when the cold and the hot currents meet, condensation is the
natural result," said the judge. "Plain, simple, scientific as a
fiddle."

"Just about," said Morgan.

Judge Thayer passed it, either ignoring it as a fling beneath the notice
of a scientific man, or not catching the note of ridicule.

"He's at work in my garden now," he said, "sending up his invisible
vapors. I want to center the downpour from the heavens over this
God-favored spot, right over this God-favored spot of Ascalon."

CHAPTER XXIII

ASCALON CURLS ITS LIP

It was the marvel and regret of people who made their adventures
vicariously, and lived the thrill of them by reading the newspapers,
that Ascalon had come to a so sudden and unmistakable end of its
romance. For a little while there was hope that it might rise against
this Cromwell who had reached out a long arm and silenced it; for a few
days there was satisfaction in reading of this man's exploits in this
wickedest of all wicked towns, for newspapers sent men to study him, and
interview him, and write of his conquest of Ascalon on the very battle
ground.

Little enough they got out of Morgan, who met them kindly and talked of
the agricultural future of the country lying almost unpeopled beyond the
notorious little city's door. Such as they learned of his methods of
taming a lawless community they got from looser tongues than the city
marshal's.

Even from Chicago and St. Louis these explorers among the fallen temples
of adventure came, some of them veterans who had talked with Jesse James
in his day but recently come to a close. They waited around a few days
for the