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ANDERSON CROW GETS ONE ON THE KAISER

A long, low-lying bank of almost inky-black clouds hung over a blood-red horizon. The sun of a warm, drowsy September day was going to bed beyond the scallop of hills.

Suddenly the red in the sky, as if fanned by an angry wind, blazed into a rigid flame; catching the base of the coal-black cloud it turned its edges into fire; and as the flame burnt itself out, the rich yellow of gold came to glorify the triumphant cloud. The nether edge seemed to dip into a lake, the shores of which were molten gold and upon whose surface craft of ever-changing colours lay moored for the coming night.

Anderson Crow, Marshal of Tinkletown, leaned upon his front-yard fence and listened to the rhapsodic comments of Miss Sue Becker on the passing panorama. Miss Becker, who had contributed several poems to the columns of the Tinkletown Banner, and more than once had exhibited encouraging letters from the editors of McClure’s, Scribner’s, Harper’s, and other magazines, was always worth listening to, for, as every one knows, she was the first, and, so far as revealed, the only literary genius ever created within the precincts of Tinkletown.

“You’ll have to write a piece about it, Sue,” said Anderson, shifting his spare frame slightly.

“No mortal pen, Mr. Crow, could do justice to the grandeur, the overpowering splendour of that vista,” said she.

Anderson took another look at the sunset,–a more or less stealthy one, it must be confessed, out of the corner of his eye. Sunsets were not much in his line.

“It’s a great vister,” he acknowledged. “I don’t know as I can think of a word that will rhyme with it, though.”

“There is such a thing as blank verse, Mr. Crow,” said Miss Becker, smiling in a most superior way.

Mr. Crow was thinking. “Blister wouldn’t be bad,” he announced. “Something about the vister causin’ a blister. I don’t know as you are aware of the fact, Sue, but I wrote consider’ble poetry when I was a young feller. Mrs. Crow’s got ’em all tied up in a pink ribbon. It’s a mighty funny thing that she won’t even show ’em to anybody.”

“Oh, but they are sacred,” said Miss Becker feelingly, as she looked over the rims of her spectacles at a spot in the sky some forty-five degrees above the steeple of the Congregational Church down the street.

“I don’t know as I meant ’em to be sacred at the time,” said he; “but there wasn’t anything in ’em that was unfittin’ for a young lady to read.”

“You don’t understand. What could be more sacred than the outpourings of love? What more–“

“‘Course it was a good many years ago,” Mr. Crow was quick to explain.

“Love’s young dream,” chided Miss Becker coyly.

Mr. Crow twisted his sparse grey beard with unusual tenderness. “Beats all, don’t it, Sue, what a poet’ll do when he’s tryin’ to raise a moustache?”

“I am sure I don’t know,” said Miss Becker stiffly.

“Speakin’ about sunsets,” said he hastily, after a quick glance at her shaded upper lip, “how’s your pa? I heard he had a sinkin’ spell yestiday.”

“He’s better.” A moment later, with fine scorn: “His sun hasn’t set yet, Mr. Crow.”

“Beats all how he hangs on, don’t it? Eighty-seven last birthday, an’ spry as a man o’ fifty up to–” He broke off to devote his attention to a couple of strangers farther down the tree-lined street: two men who approached slowly on the plank sidewalk, pausing every now and then to peer inquiringly at the front doors of houses along the way.

Miss Sue Becker, whose back was toward the strangers, allowed her poetic mind to resume its interest in the sunset.

“Golden cloudlets float upon a coral–What did you say, Mr. Crow?”

“Ever see ’em before, Sue?”

“Hundreds of times. They remind me of the daintiest, fleeciest puffs of–“