For some unuttered and indefinable reason practically all of the present company felt in a mood promptly to betake themselves home. On his homeward way Josh Herron travelled in the company of a sorely shaken grocery clerk, and between them they, going up the street, discussed the startling episode in which they had just figured. “Lookin' down that pair of barrels certainly made a true believer out of old Highpockets, didn't it?” said the grocer's clerk, when the event had been gone over verbally from its beginning to its end. “Did you happen to see, Josh, how slow he poked his old head out past them doorjambs even after Jasper Waller told him the coast was clear? Put me in mind of one of these here old snappin'-turtles comin' out of his shell after a skeer. Well, I had a little touch of the buck-ager myself,” he confessed. “It was sorter up to our long-laiged friend to be a little bit careful,” said Josh Herron. “Coupled up the way he is, one buckshot would be liable to go through his gizzard and his lights at the same time.” A little later the grocery clerk spoke, in reference to a certain quite natural curiosity which seemingly lay at the top of his thoughts, since he had voiced it at least three times within the short space of one city block: “I wonder who that there runty hold-up could 'a' been?” “Yes, I wonder?” repeated Josh Herron in a peculiar voice. “He certainly took a long chance, whoever he was--doin' the whole job single handed,” continued the grocery clerk. “Well, I ain't begrudgin' him the eight dollars of mine that he packed off with him, seein' as how he stripped old Highpockets as clean as a whistle. And he couldn't 'a' been nothin' but a half-grown boy neither, judgin' from his build.” “Boy--hell! Say, Oscar, are you as blind as the rest of that crowd?”' asked Josh Herron, coming to a halt beneath a corner gas lamp. “Was you so skeered, too, you couldn't see a thing that was right there before your eyes as plain as day?” “What you talkin' about?” demanded the other. “If it wasn't a boy, what was it--a dwarf?” “Oscar, kin you keep a secret?” asked Josh Herron, grinning happily. “Yes? Then look here.” He opened his right hand. Across the palm of it lay a bent wire hairpin. It is possible that Oscar, the grocer's clerk, did know how to keep a secret. As to that I would not presume to speak. Conceding that he did, it is equally certain that some persons did not possess the same gift of reticence. By noon of the following day, practically all who had ears to hear with had heard in one guise or another the story of those midnight proceedings upstairs over the Blue Jug. It was inevitable that the editor of the _Daily Evening News_ should hear it, too, which he did--from a dozen different sources and by a dozen differing versions. For publication at least the distressed Highpockets had nothing to say. All things being considered, this was but natural, as you will concede.