Jack was undeniably ill, but as one whose spirit remains unconquerable, he would not go to bed. Although he could not look at a pie, he appeared about the office, like some criminal ghost obliged to haunt the scenes of its malefactions. And Jack was still capable of a suggestion. It was by his word that the three printers were named as an auxiliary commission to aid in forming an official judgment of those pies. It was of scant avail. At the close of the fifth day the foreman came to Higginson Peabody wearing a look of defeat. Even three printers had been powerless before that storm of pie. “Bill’s down an’ out,” said the foreman, dejectedly. Bill was one of the two journeymen printers. “It was a lemon pie Miss Casey made that floored him. To get the kinks out o’ Bill I had to give him a gallon of Kelly’s best Old Jordan, an’ at that he ain’t been the same man since.” “What shall we do?” queried Higginson Peabody, desperately. “We’ll be buried alive beneath an avalanche of pie!” The foreman was a fertile printer, and thought he might find a purchaser for those pies. Higginson Peabody recklessly authorised him in that behalf. Borrowing a pony from Mr. Trask’s corral, the foreman went to Cimarron and arranged for the disposal of present as well as future pies at the rate of a dollar the dozen pies, to Mr. Ingalls of the Golden Rod restaurant. The following evening the premises of the _Weekly Planet_ were happily free from pies, and the greenish cast in Jack’s cheek was giving way to the old-time hue of boyish health. No harm would have come, and the _Weekly Planet_ might have continued in its useful orbit undisturbed, had it not been for a visit that Aunt Nettie Dawson paid to Cimarron. Aunt Nettie was sedately walking in Cimarron’s only thoroughfare, intent on naught save a social hour with a valued friend, resident of that hamlet, when her glance was arrested by a certain pie in the window of the Golden Rod. It was of the mince family, and its top crust was ornamented with sundry nicks and flourishes, made by the point of a knife, and which in their whole effect resembled the remains of a pair of centipedes that had met a violent death. Aunt Nettie put on her glasses, took a second look to make sure, and then stalked into the Golden Rod, demanding its proprietor by name. “Wherever did you-all get my pie, Bill Ingalls?” was the question which Aunt Nettie put. The frown that darkened her brow was like a threat. Mr. Ingalls, commonly, was a brave and truthful man, and yet he told Aunt Nettie that he didn’t know. Mr. Ingalls said that the particular pie to which she pointed was a mystery and its origin wrapped in fog. Aunt Nettie snorted. “You needn’t lie to me, Bill Ingalls,” she retorted; “you got it of that beanstalk editor. I’ll show that cheap Yankee who he’s foolin’ with as soon as ever I see Dodge ag’in.”