lains are loose in town, an--"

"Hold on, Mr. Crow," cried the other lad, seizing his opportunity.
"There's more'n two. Three or four more fellers from the outside come up
an' busted in the door an' _let_ 'em out. Then they all run down the
street to where the new bank is. Me an' Bud seen some of 'em climb into
one of the winders of the bank, an' nen we struck out to find you, Mr.
Crow. We thought maybe you'd like to know what--"

The rest of Roswell's narrative was lost in the hullabaloo of command
and action. The fickle populace turned its back on the burning warehouse
and swept down the lane in quest of new excitement. The tottering wall
came down with a crash, but its fall was unwitnessed except by those
infirm old ladies and gentlemen who had lagged so far behind in the
first rush for safety that they were still in ignorance of the latest
calamity. It was a pity, wrote Miss Sue Becker in her diary, that the
gods crowded so much into a single night when there were "three hundred
and sixty-four more perfectly good nights available."

The story of the two boys proved not only to be true, but also woefully
lacking in exaggeration. The jail-delivery and the looting of the First
National Bank of Tinkletown turned out to be but two in a long and
fairly complete list of disasters.

Investigation revealed an astonishing thoroughness and impartiality on
the part of the bandits. The safe in Brubaker's drugstore was missing,
with something like nineteen dollars in cash; Lamson's store had been
entered, and the cash-register rifled; Fryback's hardware-store,
Higgins' feed-store and Rush Applegate's tailor-shop were visited, and,
as Harry Squires said in the _Banner_, "contents noted." Two brand-new
"shoes" and a couple of inner tubes were missing from Gillespie's
Universal Garage, and Ed Higgins' dog was slain in cold blood by the
"remorseless ravagers."

* * * * *

Nobody went to sleep that night. Everybody joined in the search for the
robbers. Citizens hurried home after the first alarm and did their part
by looking under every bed in their houses, after which the more
venturesome visited garrets, cellars and woodsheds.

Anderson Crow, after organizing a large posse and commandeering several
automobiles, suddenly remembered that he had left his silver watch and a
wallet containing eleven dollars under his pillow. He drove home as
rapidly as possible in John Blosser's 1903 Pope-Toledo and