[Illustration: FORCED TO DO DUTY]

"And do you know that on toward the end of my term they had the face
to try to nominate me again? It's a positive fact. Those politicians
wanted me to run again; said I was the most popular coroner the county
ever had; said that everybody liked my way of handling a dead person,
it was so full of feeling and sympathy, and a lot more like that. But
what did I do? I wasn't going to run any such risk again. So I went up
to the city, and the day before the convention met I sent word down
that I was dead. Circulated a report that I'd been killed by falling
off a ferry-boat. Then they hung the convention-hall in black and
passed resolutions of respect, and then they nominated Barney Maginn.

"On the day after election I turned up, and you never saw men look so
miserable, so cut to the heart, as those politicians. They said it was
an infamous shame to deceive them in that way, and they declared that
they'd run me for sheriff at the next election to make up for it. If
they do, I'm going to move for good. I'm going to sail for Colorado,
or some other decent place where they'll let a man alone. I'll die in
my tracks before I'll ever take another office in this county. I will,
now mind me!"




CHAPTER XVIII.

_THE MATUTINAL ROOSTER_.