practiced by the company. While I was in the
editorial room two or three visitors came in. The first one behaved
in a violent and somewhat mysterious manner. He saluted the major by
throwing a chair at him. Then he seized the editor by the hair, bumped
his head against the table three or four times and kicked him. When
this exhilarating exercise was over, the visitor shook his fist very
close to the major's nose and said, "You idiot and outcast, if you
don't put that notice in to-morrow, I'll come round here and murder
you! Do you hear me?" Then he cuffed the major's ears a couple of
times, kicked him some more, emptied the ink-stand over his head,
poured the sand from the sand-box in the same place, knocked over the
table and went out. During all this time the major sat still with a
sickly kind of a smile upon his face and never uttered a word. When
the man left, the major picked up the table, wiped the ink and sand
from his face, and turning to me said,

"Harry will have his little fun, you see."

[Illustration: THE SHERIFF IS MAD]

"He is a somewhat exuberant humorist," I replied. "What was the object
of the joke?"

"Well, he's going to sell his furniture at auction, and I promised to
notice the fact in to-day's _Patriot_, but I forgot it, and he called
to remind me of it."

"Do all of your friends refresh your memory in that vivid manner? If
I'd been in your place, I'd have knocked him down."

"No, you wouldn't," said Slott--"no, you wouldn't. Harry is the
sheriff, and he controls two thousand dollars' worth of official
advertising. I'd sooner he'd kick me from here to Borneo and back
again than to take that advertising away from the _Patriot_. What are
a few bumps and a sore shin or two compared with all that fatness? No,
sir; he can have all the fun he wants out of me."

The next visitor was less demonstrative. He was tall and slender and
clad in the habiliments of woe. He entered the office and took a
chair. Removing his hat, he wiped the moisture from his eyes, rubbed
his nose thoughtfully for a moment, put his handkerchief in his hat,
his hat upon the floor, and said,

"You didn't know Mrs. Smith?"

"I hadn't that pleasure. Who was she?"

"She was my wife. She's been sick some time. But day before yesterday
she was took worse, and she kep' on sinking until evening, when she
gave a kinder sudden jump a couple of times, and then her spirit
flickered. Dead, you know. Passed away into another world."