Finally on Friday night, Policeman Costello, who was in the deal, told Clayt that the expected had happened and that Mrs. Saunders had told him about the horrible incendiary plot which was being hatched. Saturday night came, and Costello refused to go to Clayt's store unless Mrs. Saunders would come and denounce the villains, who were among our most respected citizens. So Mrs. Saunders finally agreed, in fear and trembling, and, taking a couple of her firmest friends, she led Policeman Costello down to Clayt's restaurant at midnight, and, sure enough, there was a light in the back part. Costello burst open the door, and when they all rushed down on the scene of the crime, they found Clayt and half a dozen of us manfully smoking up a box of stogies which a slick traveling man had unloaded on him. Mrs. Saunders insisted that crime was about to be committed and got so excited that she repeated Clayt's exact words--in the middle of which a great light came to her, and she said she was going home. "I think you had better," said Clayt, "and I'll tell you something more. You listen to other people's affairs more than is good for you." But she hasn't since. Of course you don't have these troubles. But whenever I see New York people harboring telephones in their homes which absolutely decline to be civil until you feed them five cents, I think of our Homeburg blessings and am content. Six dollars a year buys a telephone at home, and about the only families which haven't telephones are a few widows who live frugally on nothing a year, and old Mr. Stephens, who has one hundred thousand dollars loaned out on mortgages and spends half an hour picking out the biggest eggs when he buys half a dozen. There isn't a farm within ten miles which isn't connected with the town, and while the desk 'phone is a novelty with us and we still have to grind away at a handle to get Central, we can put just as much conversation into the transmitter and take just as much out of the receiver as if we were connected with a million telephones. Our Homeburg 'phones are old-fashioned; and the lines sound as if eleven million bees were holding indignation meetings on them, but they have made a big family out of three whole counties, and I guess they will take care of us all right--so long as Carrie holds out and we can keep that Sam fellow where he belongs. XI A HOMEBURG SCHOOL ELECTION _Where Woman is Allowed to Vote and Man Has To_