other. Hallo! What's the matter with you, Potts? Your mouth
and shirt are all stained with blood!"

"Oh, nothing," said Potts, forgetting himself. "I just lost a tooth,
and--"

"You lost a--Who pulled it?" asked the doctor.

"Gentlemen," said Potts, "the fact is I shot it out with my gun."

Then they put Potts under bail for attempted assassination, and Dingus
said that as soon as he got well he would bang Mr. Potts with a club.
When the crowd had gone, the coroner said to Potts,

"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?"

"Well, Mr. Maginn," replied Potts, "I really didn't know Mr. Dingus
was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way."

"Oh, it isn't that," said the coroner--"it isn't that. I don't mind
your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn't you kill him while
you were at it, and give me a chance? You want to see me starve, don't
you? I wish you'd a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his
liver, and then I'd a had my regular fees. But as it is, I have all
the bother and get nothing. I'd starve to death if all men were like
you."

And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn
rather more than Mr. Dingus.

* * * * *

Coroner Maginn's condition, however, is one of chronic discontent.
Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,

"Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn."

"Dull! Well, that's just no name for it. This is the deadest town I
ever--Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last
month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last
summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries
people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions
and roofs fallin' in--'most always somethin' lively to afford a
coroner a chance. But here! Why, I don't get 'nough fees in a year to
keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers. I don't--now, that's the honest
truth."

"That does seem discouraging."

"And then the worst of it is a man's friends won't stand by him.
There's Doolan, the coroner in the next county. He found a drowned man
up in the river just beyond the county line. I ought to have had the
first shy at the body by rights, for I know well enough he fell in
from this county and then skeeted up with the tide. But no; Doolan
would hold the inquest; and do you believe that man actually wouldn't
float the remains down the river so's I could sit