ughed, and
all the world was set to music, but Newt was not a happy man.

He was not a happy man for the simple reason that everybody else in town
had heard the "news" long before it reached him. For half-an-hour or
more he had been putting that same old question to every one he met;
indeed, he even went out of his way five or six blocks to ring the front
door bell at the home of William Grimes, night watchman at Smock's
Warehouse, rousing him from a sound sleep in order to impart the "news"
to him, only to have Bill call him a lot of hard names while making it
clear that he had heard it before going to bed for the day.

The more Newt thought of it, the more he realized that it was his duty
to go back and look up Uncle Dad Simms, even though it meant yelling his
head off when he found him; it was a moral certainty that the only
person in Tinkletown who _had_n't heard it was Uncle Dad,--and he would
take a lot of telling.

The _Weekly Banner_ would not be out till the following day; for at
least twenty hours Uncle Dad would remain in the densest ignorance of
the sensation that had turned Tinkletown completely upside down.
Somebody ought to tell him. Somebody ought to tell poor old Uncle Dad
Simms, that was all there was about it.

Moved by a sharp thrill of benevolence, Mr. Spratt retraced his steps,
an eager look in his eyes. He found the old man standing in the broad,
open door of Bill Kepsal's blacksmith shop. The blacksmith's assistant
was banging away with might and main at his anvil, and Uncle Dad wore a
pleased, satisfied smile on his thin old lips. He always said he loved
to stand there and listen to the faint, faraway music of the hammer on
the anvil, so different from the hammers and anvils they used to have
when he was a boy,--when they were so blamed noisy you couldn't hear
yourself think.

Newt took him by the arm and led him away. He was going to tell him the
"news," but he wasn't going to tell it to him there. The only place to
tell Uncle Dad anything was over in the Town Hall, provided it was
unoccupied, and thither he conducted the expectant old man. As they
mounted the steps leading to the Hall, Uncle Dad's pleased expression
developed into something distinctly audible--something resembling a
cackle of joy. Mr. Spratt favoured him with a sharp, apprehensive
glance.

"Are they goin' to hold the inquest as soon as all this?" shouted Uncle
Dad, putting his lips as close as possible to Newt's ear.