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Mr. Reesling broke the silence. There was a worried, sympathetic note in his voice.

“Got on his Sunday clothes, Anderson, and this is only Wednesday. Beats the Dutch, don’t it?”

“I wonder–” began Mr. Crow, and then closed his lips so tightly and so abruptly that his sparse chin whiskers stuck out almost horizontally.

He started off briskly in the wake of the young people. Alf, forgetting his own apprehensions in the face of this visible manifestation, shuffled along a few paces behind.

Miss Crow and her companion turned the corner below and were lost to view.

“By gosh,” said Alf, suddenly increasing his speed until he came abreast of the other; “you better hurry, Anderson. Justice Robb’s in his office. I seen his feet in the winder a little while ago.”

“They surely can’t be thinkin’ of–” Mr. Crow did not complete the sentence.

“Why not?” demanded Alf. “Everybody else is. And it would be just like that Schultz boy to do it without an invitation. Ever since this war’s been goin’ on them Schultzes have been blowin’ about always bein’ prepared fer anything. German efficiency’s what they’re always throwin’ up to people. I bet he’s been over to the county seat an’ got a license to–“

Anderson interrupted him with a snort. He put his hand on his right hip pocket, where something bulged ominously, and quickened his pace.

“I been watchin’ these Schultzes fer nearly a year,” said he, “an’ the whole caboodle of ’em are spies.”

They turned the corner. Susie and her companion were on the point of disappearing in a doorway fifty yards down Sickle Street.

Anderson slowed up. He removed his broad felt hat with the gold cord around it, and mopped his forehead.

“That’s the tin-type gallery,” he said, a little out of breath.

“Worse an’ more of it,” said Alf. “That’s the surest sign I know of. It never fails. Mollie an’ me had our’n taken the day before we was married an’–an’–why, it’s almost the same as a certificat’, Anderson.”

“Now, you move on, Alf,” commanded the marshal. “How many times I got to tell you not to loiter aroun’ the streets? Move on, I say.”

“Aw, now, Anderson–“

“I’ll have to run you in, Alf. The ord’nance is very p’ticular, an’ that notice stuck up on the telephone pole over there means you more’n anybody else. No loiterin’.”

“If you need any evidence ag’in that Schultz boy, just call on me,” said Alf generously. “I seen him commit an atrocity last week.”

“What was it?”

“He give that little Griggs girl a lift in his butcher wagon,” said Alf darkly.

Anderson scowled. “The sooner we run these cussed Germans out o’ town the better off we’ll be.”

Alf ambled off, casting many glances over his shoulder, and the marshal crossed the street and entered Hawkins’s Undertaking and Embalming establishment, from a window of which he had a fair view of the “studio.”

Presently Susie and young Schultz emerged, giggling and snickering over the pink objects they held in their hands. They sauntered slowly, shoulder to shoulder, in the direction of Main Street.

Mr. Hawkins was in the middle of one of his funniest stories when Anderson got up and walked out hurriedly. The undertaker had a reputation as a wit. He was the life of the community. He radiated optimism, even when most depressingly employed. And here he was telling Anderson Crow a brand-new story he had heard at a funeral over in Kirkville, when up jumps his listener and “lights out” without so much as a word. Mr. Hawkins went to the door and looked out, expecting to see a fight or a runaway horse or a German airplane. All he saw was the marshal not two doors away, peering intently into a show-window, while from across the street two young people regarded him with visible amusement. For a long time thereafter the undertaker sat in his office and stared moodily at the row of caskets lining the opposite wall. Could it be possible that he was losing his grip?