take the thing in his unworthy hands. Ranny patted its nickel barrel lovingly and sighted along it at some imaginary

prey.

"Oo! there's a bear!" he exclaimed.

It was not exactly a bear, but it was a sparrow which was hopping about, all ignorant of the desperate character of these outlaws. Ranny did not know that the gun was already cocked and ready for use. When he pulled that trigger he had no designs upon that innocent bird, which would have been in no danger if he had. For Ranny to hit at movable sparrow with an air-gun can only be put down to the long arm of COincidence, aggravated by criminal carelessness on the part of the sparrow.

"Oh, now look what you did!" cried Clarence as the bird flopped to the ground.

Just in time Ranny remembered the character all had assumed for the afternoon. "I'm a dead shot. My name's ol' Eagle Eye.'

All abandoned their more-or-less felonious employments. Ted Blake shook off his apathy and got the dying bird; Clarence bitterly accused Ranny of getting the gun under false pretenses. Bud Hicks stopped being a Simon Legree and looked tenderly at the departed. Ranny's position was unbearable. Not only was he heartbroken at the accident, but he had to keep up a pretense that it was no accident at all, but an example of the ruthlessness of his nature.

"Mebbe it's better off now," said Tom. "I s'pose sparrows goes to heaven. Don't they?"

Ted Blake crushed this hope. "Robins do, but not sparrows.

"What do you know about heaven?" Ranny demanded, hotly.

After a decent interval the others went back to their misdemeanors, but Tom and Ted and Clarence and the miserable Ranny sat and talked about the departed.

"Ain't it funny," said Tom, dolefully, "a little while ago he was hoppin' around, all happy an' everything.

"Aw, keep still, can't you?" said old Eagle Eye.

They plunged rather deep into things now. Ted Blake developed some hitherto unsuspected sentiments about the

life beyond the grave. They all looked. up into the fleecy clouds and tried to penetrate the mysteries of the universe. Sometimes they fell silent and gave themselves up to long, long thought, there amid the hot, sedgy smells, while the afternoon drowsed itself away to the sleepy droning of insects. Directly eastward, with his feet propped against a tree, Link Weyman was learning from literature the value of thrift and honesty to aspiring paying-tellers. Bud Hicks was idly making a chain of dandelion stems. "Fatty" Hartman was demanding from Tug Wiltshire the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is doubtful whether any venture in organized wickedness, undertaken with equal earnestness and singleness of purpose, ever failed more completely.

Meanwhile the affairs of the juvenile delinquents had been taken in hand by the Higher Powers-more specifically, Mrs. Raleigh and Mrs. Weyman, who were sitting upon the veranda of the Weyman residence doing embroidery and praising each other's sons at the expense of the general average of boykind.

"I always feel safe about Clarence when he is with Link," said Mrs. Raleigh, who had left her own home to the care of those two admirable characters.

"I'm afraid you must think that Link is quite a barbarian," Mrs. Weyman replied. "Clarence is so refined."

"Not at all," said Mrs. Raleigh, amiably. "It must have been quite a shock to Link to fall into the hands of those rough boys down by the foundry."

"Oh, did he tell you about that?"

"Yes, he spoke of it when he came over to play with Clarence. I didn't have time to listen to the whole story. Something ought to be done about that butcher's boy. He is a bad influence among the children."

"Boys are such imitators," Mrs. Weyman replied.

After five minutes these good ladies had convinced each other that young Willet would have to be suppressed.

"If you'll let me, I'll telephone to Mr. Raleigh and have him speak to the city marshal," Mrs. Raleigh concluded.

She forthwith did her duty by the community and Mr. Raleigh rather re

luctantly promised to look up the police force as soon as he could get away from the store and ask it to step around to the foundry. Presently, during a lull in business, he unfortunately remembered his promise, which he had rather hoped to forget, and mentioned the matter to Marshal Hiram Jenkins (known to the irreverent as "High Jinks"), who was leisurely preserving the peace along the shady side of Main Street.

"I've had no complaints," said Hi, "but I'll look into it right away."

Thereupon he repaired, not to the scene of the crime, but to the livery-stable where Lem White usually occupied a chair against an occasional job of driving. Lem was a firm believer in law and order and in the dollar allowed by the city for assisting the more regular police force in making an arrest. He was not in the liverystable, but the resourceful marshal readily found him at the hose-house, where he was playing checkers with Sim Coley.

"Come on, Lem," said Marshal Jenkins. "I got a little job for you. I don't know as it will amount to anything."

asked White, whose compensation was on a per capita basis.

"I have every reason to believe so, but I don't anticipate much trouble." Hi had a special manner of speech for official business, though he remembered it only part of the time.

Thus "deputized," Lem left his pleasure-loving companion and accompanied the chief of police upon his stern errand. Hi wore nothing by way of uniform except a helmet of antiquarian interest and a star bearing the words, "Lakeville City Marshal." He wore this badge upon his coat, during the coat season, but in the summer months upon his suspender.

"I got information," said Hi, "that Willet's boy has got a hangout back of the old foundry. We'll see what they're up to."

"Quite a number of them kids?"

There was no trouble-neither, for that matter, was there any "Butch." Though it showed signs of recent occupancy, the place was deserted and contained nothing of a criminal nature.

"Mebbe they moved," said the deputy. "Le's saunter around a little and make inquiries.'

They sauntered eastward and made inquiries. Nobody had seen "Butch" Willet or any of his abandoned companions, but finally an elderly man of nervous temperament reported that some sort of riotous living was going on down at the eastern edge of the marsh.

"More'n likely that's them," said Hi. As they neared the place indicated the desperate nature of the gathering became clear because of the unseasonable fire.

"We won't use no violence unless it's necessary," said the marshal by way of final instructions as they plunged through the thicket and down among the lower orders of society.

"Here! what's going on here?" asked the official as he burst upon the scene of riotous reading, abandoned authorsplaying, and theological discussion. The offenders were too astonished to reply.

Lem White was doing what is known in theatrical circles as "counting up the counting up the house"; the result looked like a pretty good day's work. But the responsible officer had no such pleasant reactions. "Say," he asked the miscreant with the gun, "aren't you Raleigh's boy?" "Ye-yes, sir; my name is Clarence Raleigh," replied the accused.

The marshal stroked his sparsest whisker in embarrassment while his eye fell upon a youth who was trying to sit upon some damaging evidence in the way of reading matter.

"Are you the son of Treasurer Weyman?"

Link, thus cornered, admitted this charge.

The marshal looked around the circle, identifying the descendants of more or less prominent citizens and taxpayers people of influence in the town's affairs, and members of the correct political party. His face took on a hunted look. "Lookee here, Lem," he said, "this here ain't the right gang. Nobody's made complaints against these here boys. We'll just send 'em home and say nothing, eh?"

But Lem was greatly depressed at the degenerate tendencies of these modern. times. "They're an awful tough crowd," he said "shootin' birds and playin' cards an' everything. It's time an example was made."

Hi went into executive session by speaking confidentially through the side of his mouth. "We'll just escort 'em to their parents I'll see that something is done for you, if I have to pay it my own self."

"Well, of course a person ought to be

paid for their time," replied the prominent checker-player.

"We'll divide 'em up," said Hi. "You take the Raleigh and Weyman boys-it would be a kind of a favor. I-you live over that way, anyhow," he finished, with a dash.

To save the raid from being an utter failure, the officers of the law destroyed the building and burned up the objectionable playing-cards and book. The culprits were then shown to their homes. Ranny was delivered by Marshal Jenkins himself, together with a harrowing tale to mother of the carryings-on discovered at the edge of the marsh. The officer made it clear that only his personal esteem for this otherwise respectable family had saved the boy from arrest -though he did not specify upon what charge he would have haled Ranny into court perhaps under the ancient antidumping act.

To Ranny's surprise, mother took a defensive attitude. "I don't see that these boys did anything so dreadful," she said. "Who made the complaint?"

"Mrs. Raleigh sent in the word, ma'am," said the official, backing away from the door. "She and Mrs. Weyman-" Hi saw that his talent for sociability was rapidly getting him into trouble. "Well, I got to be going. Hot day, isn't it?"

Ranny was greatly touched by mother's loyalty to him in this crisis. "That ol' marshal thinks he's smart," he said, when the law was safely out of hearing.

Here, however, he received his second surprise. It seemed that mother had one standard of conduct for the presence of the police force and another for the privacy of the home.

"You may go to bed," she decreed. "Father will attend to your case when he comes home."

"We wasn't doing anything." "What about shooting birds? Who did that?"

"They was hardly any shooting," Ranny replied, but the subject was one he did not care to dwell upon, so he withdrew himself from the picture and went to his punitive bed.

Before long there were sounds indicating that father had come home and with too great promptness he was at the

bedside. Father, with a skill in crossquestioning born of long practice, soon laid the history of the afternoon pretty bare. Ranny admitted everything, including the death of the unoffending bird and the abandoned theological dis

cussion.

"I guess I been pretty bad," said Ranny. Here a phrase which he had often heard in Sunday-school popped conveniently into his mind. "But I'm going to try to lead a better life."

"Well"-father was apparently having difficulty in controlling his emotions "I'm glad you stopped before it was too late. He put his hand over his face and started for the door. "I'll see -what mother thinks-of sending in a little supper."

"No, I don't think I'd better have any supper," said Ranny. "I don't s'pose I deserve any."

Father disappeared abruptly, leaving Ranny to the luxury of repentance. He was convinced now that he was a brand plucked from the burning, and there was, surprisingly, a lot of satisfaction in the thought. When mother brought in a tray of supper he thought that he was getting more than his deserts-but nevertheless he ate the supper.

If Ranny could have heard the conversation which took place at the suppertable, he would not have been so sure of the success of his venture into crime.

"I've been taking up the matter with our son pretty thoroughly," said father, using words designed to soar over the head of the child Lucy, "and I find that his crowd, with the worst intentions in the world, did not succeed in being very bad. They had the desire to be criminals without the training or equipment." A faint, reminiscent smile crossed his face as he recalled something in his own desperate past.

"I can't understand," said mother, "why Mrs. Raleigh put the marshal on them her own boy among them, and Link Weyman.'

"That's the joke of it," said father"it's all over town. She started Jenkins after young Willet's crew down at the foundry. He took Lem White as a bodyguard. They didn't find anybody there, so they went and broke up this gang of Ranny's"-father was now enjoying himself thoroughly-"including her own precious boy and the son of our county treasurer. I saw Raleigh coming out of the Bulletin office as I came home. He assured me that there wouldn't be any