is finger around the moist "sweat-band," he blurted out: "I don't
mind if you tell your fadder, Susie. Go and tell him."

"Tell him yourself," said Susie.

"As I was saying a few minutes ago," said Otto ingenuously, "the only
obchection I had to your tellin' your fadder was that I didn't want
everybody in town to know it before I could get home and tell my mother
yet."

"Don't go away, Alf," said Mr. Crow, darkly. "I'll need you as a
witness. I hereby subpoena you as a witness to what's goin' to happen in
less'n no time. Now, Mr. Otto Schultz, spit it out."

Otto disgorged these cyclonic words:

"I'm going to get married, Mr. Crow, that's all."

Mr. Crow was equally explicit and quite as brief.

"Only over my dead body," he shouted, and then turned upon Susie. "You
go home, Susan Crow! Skedaddle! Get a move on, I say. I'll nip this
blamed German plot right in the beginning. Do you hear me, Susan--"

Susan stared at him. "Hear you?" she cried. "They can hear you up in
the graveyard. What on earth's got into you, Pop? What--"

"You'll see what's got into me, purty derned quick," said Anderson, and
pointed his long, trembling forefinger at the amazed Mr. Schultz, who
had dropped his hat and was stooping over to retrieve it without taking
his eyes from the menacing face of the speaker.

It had rolled in the direction of Mr. Alf Reesling. That gentleman
obligingly stopped it with his foot. After removing his foot, he
undertook to return the hat without stooping at all, the result being
that it sped past Otto and landed in the middle of the street some
twenty feet away.

"So you think you c'n git married without my consent, do you?" demanded
Anderson, witheringly. "You think you c'n sneak around behind my back
an'--"

"I ain'd sneakin' aroundt behind anybody's back," broke in Otto,
straightening up. "I don't know what you are talking aboud, Mr.
Crow,--and needer do you," he added gratuitously. "What for do I haf to
get your consent to get married for? I get myself's consent and my
girl's consent and my fadder's consent--Say!" His voice rose. "Don't you
think I am of age yet?"

"If you talk loud like that, I'll run you in fer disturbin' the peace,
young feller," warned Anderson, observing that a few of Tinkletown's
citizens were slowly but surely surrendering squatter's rights to
chairs and soap-boxes on the shady side of the block. "Just you keep a
civil tongue in--"

"You ain'd answered my question yet," in