"Where's Mr. Crow? Mr. Crow! Where are you?" "Sh!" hissed Alf Reesling, glowering upon the excited boy, who had just come up at full speed from the direction of the town. "Don't you make so much noise! The walls are going to cave in, an'--" "Where's Mr. Crow?" panted the boy, a lad of twelve. His eyes appeared starting from his head. A second boy joined him, and he was trembling so violently that he could not speak at all. All he could do was to point at the lank figure of the old town marshal, some distance back in the crowd. Three seconds later the two youngsters had the ear of Anderson Crow, and between them they poured it full of news of the most extraordinary character. The crowd, forgetting the imminent crash of the warehouse wall, pressed eagerly forward. "Wait a second--wait a second!" roared Anderson. "One at a time now. Don't both of you talk at oncet. You, Bud--you tell it. You keep still, Roswell Hatch. Take your time, Bud!" "Lemme tell it, Mr. Crow," begged Roswell. "I knowed it first. It ain't fair for Bud to--" "But I got here first," protested Bud, and there might have been something more sanguinary than mere words if Marshal Crow had not interfered. "None o' that, now! What's the matter, Bud?" "Somethin' turrible has happened, Mr. Crow--somethin' awfully turrible," wheezed the boy. "If you derned little scalawags have run all the way from town to tell me that Smock's warehouse is on fire, you'd--" "Oh, gee, that ain't nothin'!" gulped Bud. "Wait till you hear what I know." "I can't wait all night. I got to save Mr. Pratt's studio, an'--" "Well, you know them two tramps you put in the lock-up yesterday afternoon?" cried Bud. "Desperit characters, both of 'em. I figgered they was up to some devilment an--" "Well, they ain't in any more; they're out. Ros an' me seen the whole business. We wuz--" "Geminy crickets! What's this? A jail-break? Out of the way, everybody! Two desperit villains are loose in town, an--" "Hold on, Mr. Crow," cried the other lad, seizing his opportunity. "There's more'n two. Three or four more fellers from the outside come up an' busted in the door an' _let_ 'em out. Then they all run down the street to where the new bank is. Me an' Bud seen some of 'em climb into one of the winders of the bank, an' nen we struck out to find you, Mr. Crow. We thought maybe you'd like to know what--" The rest of Roswell's narrative was lost in the hullabaloo of command and action. The fickle populace turned its back on the burning warehouse and swept down the lane in quest of new excitement. The tottering wall came down with a crash, but its fall was unwitnessed except by those infirm old ladies and gentlemen who had lagged so far behind in the first rush for safety that they were still in ignorance of the latest calamity. It was a pity, wrote Miss Sue Becker in her diary, that the gods crowded so much into a single night when there were "three hundred and sixty-four more perfectly good nights available."