PART I “I’ll catch the first train back this evening, Graves. Wouldn’t go down there if it were not absolutely necessary; but I have just heard that Mrs. Delancy is to leave for New York to-night, and if I don’t see her to-day there will be a pack of troublesome complications. Tell Mrs. Graves she […]

“Have you heard the latest news?” inquired Newt Spratt, speaking in a hushed voice. He addressed Uncle Dad Simms, the town’s oldest inhabitant, whom he met face to face at the corner of Main and Sickle streets one fine morning in May. Now any one in Tinkletown would tell you that it was the sheerest […]

It wasn’t often that Marshal Crow acknowledged that he was in a quandary. When he did find himself in that rare state of mind, he invariably went to Harry Squires, the editor of the Banner, for counsel–but never for advice. He had in the course of a protracted career as preserver of the peace and […]

REWARD!!! $25.00 For the Apprehension or Capture of Person or Persons Who Successfully Stole the Fashionable Bulldog Belonging to Mrs. M. Fryback on or About Friday of Last Week! N. B.–Said dog occasionally answers to the name of Marmaduke, but mostly to Mike. An Additional Reward of Three Dollars Cash will be paid for the […]

The case of Loop vs. Loop was docketed for the September term in the Bramble County Circuit Court at Boggs City. When it became officially known in Tinkletown, through the columns of the Banner, that Eliphalet Loop had brought suit for divorce against his wife Anna, the town experienced a convulsion that bore symptoms of […]

A veiled lady is not, in ordinary circumstances, an object of concern to anybody. Circumstances, however, are sometimes so extraordinary that a veiled lady becomes an object of concern to everybody. If the old-time novelists are to be credited, an abundantly veiled lady is more than a source of interest; she is the vital, central […]

Lucius Fry lived up back of the Power-house on the outskirts of Tinkletown. He had a wife, two children and a horse and buggy. For a great many years he had led a quiet, peaceful, even suppressed existence. Being a rather smallish, bony sort of man, with a large Adam’s apple and bow legs, he […]

ANDERSON CROW MEETS HIS WATERLOO AND HIS MARNE For sixteen consecutive years Anderson Crow had been the Marshal of Tinkletown. A hiatus of two years separated this period of service from another which, according to persons of apparently infallible memory, ran through an unbroken stretch of twenty-two years. Uncle Gid Luce stoutly maintained–and with some […]

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; […]

Anderson Crow sat on the porch of the post-office, ruminating over the epidemic that had assailed Tinkletown with singular virulence, and, in a sense, enthusiasm. Not that there was anything sinister or loathsome about the plague. Far from it, he reflected, because it had broken out so soon after his bitter comments on the prolonged […]

Two events of great importance took place in Tinkletown on the night of May 6, 1918. The first, occurring at half-past ten o’clock, was of sufficient consequence to rouse the entire population out of bed–thereby creating a situation, almost unique, which allowed every one in town to participate in all the thrills of the second. […]

Young Rossiter did not like the task. The more he thought of it as he whirled northward on the Empire State Express the more distasteful it seemed to grow. “Hang it all,” he thought, throwing down his magazine in disgust, “it’s like police work. And heaven knows I haven’t wanted to be a cop since […]