--"

Mr. Britt scowled at Mr. Files, and the latter slap-slupped on his
slippered way; it was certainly news that Britt had taken on a manager.
Such a personage must be permitted to be familiar. When Mr. Files looked
again, Mr. Orne was eating a second doughnut. He was laying down the law
to a nodding and assenting Mr. Britt on some point, and then he took a
third doughnut and rose to his feet.

"I'll be back to-night, with full details and further instructions to
you, Britt," declared Mr. Orne, who was known in the county political
circles as "Sniffer" Orne. He combined politics with nursery-stock
canvassing and had a way of his own in getting under the skins of men
when he went in search of information. "If I ain't back to-night I'll
report to-morrow. I may have to take a run over into Norway, Vienna, and
Peru to make sure of how things stand generally."

He trudged out, stooping forward and waddling with the gait of a parrot
ambling along on a pole; his projecting coat tail and his thin beak
gave him a sort of avian look. The commercial drummer, overhearing his
projected itinerary, glanced out of the window as if he expected to
see Mr. Orne spread wings and fly. But Mr. Orne tucked himself into a
high-backed sleigh and went jangling off along Egypt's single street.

The stranger, inquiring of Mr. Files, learned that Mr. Orne was not as
much of a globe-trotter as he sounded.

"It's only the way the Old Sirs named the towns in the ranges about here
when the land was took up. In this range we have Egypt and them other
towns you heard him speak of. In the next range below are Jerusalem and
Damascus and Levant and Purgatory Mills. If them unorganized townships
to the north of us are ever took up and made towns of, it would be just
like some whifflehead to name 'em Heaven, Hell, Hooray, and Hackmetack.
But the name of Egypt fits this town all right," stated Mr. Files,
disconsolately, and in his perturbation raising his voice.

"Files, don't run down your home town," rasped Mr. Britt.

"What has been run down as far's it can be run can't be run no farther,"
said the landlord. "And I 'ain't said why the name Egypt fits the town,
for that matter." Britt's ugly stare was taking the spirit out of the
landlord's rebelliousness.

"Suppose you do say!" counseled Mr. Britt, menace in his tones. "I've
got a new and special reason, right now, why I demand that every citizen
must uphold the good name of our town--especially a