"Remember!" shouted Banks. "What do you think I am?--Methuselah? I remember more things than you ever heard of. Why, Sadie and I went skating the night you couldn't find your fat horse and sleigh." "Ya-a-a--" yelled Payley, with a sudden shriek of laughter. "Never knew who took your rig, did you, Sim?" "You--you--" said Sim, glaring at Banks. "You confounded horse thief, I believe you took Sadie in my own sleigh." "Ain't he bright, Pudge," gasped Payley, "only took him thirty years to catch on." "Well, Banksie," said Sim, "Sadie's been more particular about her young men since that night. We've been married twenty-five years, and I guess I'll let you come up and eat this evening, anyway. She lets me bring most any old pelter home." "Gosh, boys, I can't." "Say, what are you? the porter on that varnished car down there?" demanded Sim. "Won't they let you off a minute?" "Tell you what we'll do," said Pelty Amthorne. "We'll take you to band practice to-night. Sim still runs it, but he won't let me play any more." "I haven't touched a horn since I left Homeburg," laughed Banks. "But I'd give ten dollars to see you and Wimble Horn blat away on those altos again, with your eyes bulging out of your cheeks." "We'll get Wimble and we'll break up band practice if you'll stay over." "I--" "No, you don't," said Sim. "I won't have riff-raff loafing around my band." "You won't, eh?" said Banks. "We'll show you. Come down to the car while I send about forty telegrams, and then we'll fix you, Mister Askinson." Which they did that night, while most of the town looked on. The next fall Banks came back and stayed three days, and his conduct and that of his old companions in crime set an example to our younger generation which didn't wear off for years. They went out orchard robbing in an automobile, and Banks said he never realized before the wonder of modern conveniences. VII THE HOMEBURG WEEKLY DEMOCRAT _Which Swamps the Post-Office Every Friday_ No, Jim, as I have already said about thirty-four times this week, I don't care for a paper. Don't buy one for me. I could read your New York papers for twenty-four hours at a stretch, and at the end of the time I would have to stop some good-natured looking chap and ask what the news was. It's all there, I know, but I don't seem able to find it. Even the Chicago baseball scores are hidden in the blamed things. Instead of putting them first, the way they ought to, they stick them down at the end of the page. As for the editorial pages, I might as well go to Labrador and hunt for personal friends as to read them. If there's anything that makes a stranger feel about ten thousand miles from home, with the cars not running, it is to get into the editorial page of an unknown newspaper and try to sit in with the family discussions. It makes me feel like a man who has gotten into a reunion of the Old Settlers' Association of Zanzibar by mistake.