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Miss Crow and Mr. Otto Schultz resumed their stroll after a few moments, and the marshal, following their movements in the reflecting show-window, waited until they were safely around the corner. Then he retraced his steps quickly, passed the undertaker’s place, and turned into the alley beyond. Three minutes later, he entered Main Street a block above Sickle Street, and was leaning carelessly against the Indian tobacco sign in front of Jackson’s cigar store, when his daughter and her companion bore down upon his left flank.

Mr. Alf Reesling was a few paces behind them.

As they came within earshot, young Schultz was saying in a suspiciously earnest manner:

“You better come in and have anodder sody, Susie.”

Just then their gaze fell upon Mr. Crow.

“Goodness!” exclaimed Susie, startled.

“By cheminy!” fell from Otto’s wide-open mouth. He blinked a couple of times. “Is–is that you?” he inquired, incredulously.

“You mean me?” asked Anderson, with considerable asperity.

“Sure,” said Otto, halting.

“Can’t you see it’s me?” demanded Mr. Crow.

“But you ain’d here,” said the perplexed young man, getting pinker all the time. “You’re aroundt in Sickle Street.”

“Alf!” called out Anderson. “Look here a minute. Is this me?” He spoke with biting sarcasm.

Mr. Reesling regarded him with some anxiety.

“You better go home, Anderson,” he said. “This sun is a derned sight hotter’n you think.”

“Didn’t we see you a minute ago around in Sickle Street, Pop?” inquired Susie. “Looking in that hair-dresser’s window?”

“Maybe you did and maybe you didn’t,” replied Mr. Crow, shrewdly. Then, with thinly veiled significance: “I’m purty busy lookin’ into a good many things nowadays.” He favoured Otto with a penetrating glance. “Ever sence the U. S. A. declared war on Germany, Mr. Otto Schultz.”

“How aboudt that sody, Miss Susie?” said Otto, in a pained sort of voice.

“You’d better be saving your money, Otto,” she advised, with such firmness that her father looked at her sharply.

“Oh, spiffles!” said Otto, getting still redder.

Mr. Crow was all ears. Alf Reesling burned his fingers on a match he held too long in the hot, still air some six or eight inches from the bowl of his pipe.

“Well, getting married is no joke,” said Susie, shaking her pretty head solemnly.

Otto took a deep breath. “You bet you it ain’d,” he said, with feeling. That seemed to give him courage. He took off his straw hat, and, as he ran his finger around the moist “sweat-band,” he blurted out: “I don’t mind if you tell your fadder, Susie. Go and tell him.”

“Tell him yourself,” said Susie.

“As I was saying a few minutes ago,” said Otto ingenuously, “the only obchection I had to your tellin’ your fadder was that I didn’t want everybody in town to know it before I could get home and tell my mother yet.”

“Don’t go away, Alf,” said Mr. Crow, darkly. “I’ll need you as a witness. I hereby subpoena you as a witness to what’s goin’ to happen in less’n no time. Now, Mr. Otto Schultz, spit it out.”

Otto disgorged these cyclonic words:

“I’m going to get married, Mr. Crow, that’s all.”

Mr. Crow was equally explicit and quite as brief.

“Only over my dead body,” he shouted, and then turned upon Susie. “You go home, Susan Crow! Skedaddle! Get a move on, I say. I’ll nip this blamed German plot right in the beginning. Do you hear me, Susan–“

Susan stared at him. “Hear you?” she cried. “They can hear you up in the graveyard. What on earth’s got into you, Pop? What–“

“You’ll see what’s got into me, purty derned quick,” said Anderson, and pointed his long, trembling forefinger at the amazed Mr. Schultz, who had dropped his hat and was stooping over to retrieve it without taking his eyes from the menacing face of the speaker.

It had rolled in the direction of Mr. Alf Reesling. That gentleman obligingly stopped it with his foot. After removing his foot, he undertook to return the hat without stooping at all, the result being that it sped past Otto and landed in the middle of the street some twenty feet away.