ry as head scrubwoman in one of the big departments--a place
of fatter salary than its menial name implies. There was a Mr.
Warmdollar, who in an earlier hour had held through two terms a seat in
Congress. This was years before. Failing of a second re-election, and
having become fixed in the habit of officeholding, which habit seizes
upon certain natures like a taste for opium, Mr. Warmdollar urged his
claims for some appointive place. The Senators from his home-State
felt compelled to moderately bestir themselves, the result of their
joint efforts being that Mr. Warmdollar was tendered a position
as guard about the congressional cemetery, said last resting-place of
greatness-gone-to-sleep being a wild, weird tract in a semi-farmerish
region on the fringe of town. Mr. Warmdollar objected to the place, and
the gloomy kind of its duties; but since this was before Mrs. Warmdollar
had begun to earn a salary as scrubwoman, he was driven to accept.

"Take it until something better turns up," urged one of the Senators,
who had grown tired of having Mr. Warmdollar on his hands.

It was a blustering night of rain when Mr. Warmdollar entered upon his
initial vigil as a guardian of the dead. Wet, weary, disgusted, Mr.
Warmdollar sought refuge in a coop of a sentry-box, which stood upon the
crest of a hill through which the road that bounded one side of the
burying ground had been cut. The sentry-box was waterproof and to that
extent a comfort, being designed for deluges of the sort then soaking
Mr. Warmdollar.

Had there been nothing but a downpour, Mr. Warmdollar might have borne
it until his watch was relieved; he might have even continued to perform
the duties and draw the emoluments of his place indefinitely. But the
winds rose; and they blew down Mr. Warmdollar's sentry-box. Toppling
into the road, it rolled merrily down a steep and then lay upon its
front, door downward, in the mud. Mr. Warmdollar could not get out;
being discouraged by what he had undergone, he broke into yells and
cries like a soul weltering in torment.

The yells and cries engaged the heated admiration of a farmer's dog that
dwelt hard by, and the dog descended upon the sentry-box and Mr.
Warmdollar, attacking both with an impartiality which showed him no one
to split hairs. Then the farmer came to his door, arrayed in a shirt and
a shotgun, and emptied both barrels of the latter at Mr. Warmdollar and
his sentry-box--the agriculturist not understanding