IT seemed to me I was getting into the habit of incarceration. I passed from jail to jail. It was becoming monotonous.

But this was a creditable jail, built in the fervour of the Reformation, with a considerable veranda in front facing on Main Street. In the fervour of the Reformation it had been, as you might say, a centre of interest in Zionville. So many citizens got enclosed there during that period for one reason or another connected with their not understanding the tendency of events, that this jail always had a peculiar social standing. It was not like the jails of other communities. It bore no necessary social stigma. If a citizen was deposited there, it made all the difference, and depended on the amount of repentance his case was supposed to call for, whether he was put in a front or a rear cell. Because in a front-windowed cell he could see Main Street, and maybe talk with friends in the street, or join in the conversation on the veranda. In this way the Judge and the condemned of the preceding afternoon might often be arguing in the evening through a barred window about politics or religion. Hence it always made a man vexed and low in mind to be put in a rear cell, where he couldn't see Main Street.

Doctor Ulswater and I were put in a cell over the veranda, and through the barred window we could see the length of Main Street, which ran from the railway station, at one end of the town, to nothing in particular, as yet, at the other end. Main Street now runs from the railway to the cemetery, but at that time it ran off into generalities.

Main Street at that moment was full of a crowd which acted as if it all belonged to one family. I could see Louisa standing on a dry-goods box and talking confidentially to the family. There was a general session of Zionville on Main Street. I judged we were the subject of conversation, along with Hannah Atkins. William C. Jones and two other statesmen were walking around arm in arm. The whole place was buzzing like a beehive.

Then I noticed that Dr. Ulswater was not saying anything. He was looking over my shoulder through the bars silently, and all anger was gone from his face.

“Kit,” he said, mildly, “this is a town of great interest to archaeology.”

I thought it over, and said:

“Seems to me it'd be of more interest to Mrs. Ulswater's orphan asylum. It's too fresh. It's the most youthful-minded place I ever saw. I don't see any archaeology in it.”

“Precisely,” he said. “The youthfulness of Zionville struck me too, and that not so much because of her crude appearance as because of her buoyancy. I said to myself, 'Clearly we are home again. This is no Latin mob of Portate, no explosion of firecrackers, no furious inefficiency. This is gunpowder in a gun. Here is the organising instinct, the jocular humour, together with the deadly arrival. We are in the States.' But yet I was not satisfied with that, and those considerations are not what's hoisting me now. Cast your eyes back over the late events. Look from this window on that people in their market place, their forum, their agora. Recollect how Zionville got herself together. What unity? What esprit de corps? You recognise it? Ha! No! It's Greek, sir, Greek! It's the civic clan, the municipal State. So looked the Athenians, so they acted in their market place. We have arrived not only in the States, but in Zionville. Now, what is Zionville? A piece of antiquity! Archaeology in flesh and blood! Pompeii be hanged. This is better than Pompeii. This is a reversion, an atavism!”

I said: “You'd better not deal out suspicious sounding names like those within hearing of Zionville. She's high-bred and nervous. If you mean she's a town with a character, I agree. She has more character than a bucking bronco.”

“Mysterious and extraordinary town,” he muttered. “Ha! You're right. 'Character' is the word. Personality! Personality fascinates me. I haven't the article myself. I'm a nebulous gas. Hence I thirst for, I cling to, personality. Most mysterious, most interesting town!”

“I don't deny the interest, doctor,” I said, “but it seems to me it's sort of concentrated around the question whether or not that crowd is going to take a notion to lynch us. It looks like a crowd that takes notions. Would an Athenian populace be likely to act that way?”

“Precisely,” he cried with enthusiasm. “Look at Socrates!”

It seemed to me Zionville had some game going on, but I didn't make out what the game was. It seemed to me a lynching would be little short of frivolous. But then the Athenians had acted frivolous about Socrates. Zionville was surely an unexpected place. But the crowd in Main Street didn't act like an angry crowd. It acted interested.

At this moment the door of our cell opened and Louisa and William C. Jones walked in. They sat down on a bench without speaking, and there they sat and seemed to be embarrassed, and William C. Jones' left eye was searching sideways for the cosine of x, and he began to question:

—Whether coming in a spirit of conciliation or to speak last words of warning or entreaty; and if so—

And there he stopped, as if he couldn't quite get his gait.

“Maybe you're ambassadors,” I said, “ambassadors from Zionville.”

“The very word, sir,” said Louisa, looking pleased. “Ambassadors from Zionville.” And William C. Jones began again to indicate his doubts:

—Whether a certain document received by Magistrates was intended to further public interests, or private ends, or mixed in motive; and if so, whether Dr. Ulswater's account of deceased party in question might be accepted by Magistrates and apologies tendered, according to attitude he (Dr. Uls-water) might hereafter assume; and if so, whether he (Dr. Ulswater) would rather the deceased party in question should be confiscated as incidental to judicial proceedings whose results, although likely to be fatal to him (Dr. Ulswater) and his accomplice, Zionville could no more than vainly regret, public interest being of first importance; and if so, whether Dr. Ulswater would consent to deliver over Mrs. Atkins peaceably, for a consideration, to the necessities of Zionville, and thereby win an honourable place in her (Zionville's) history; and if so, whether he would state his mind on that point without incommoding the subject with the conquest of Peru, or the natural history of South America, and thereby would accommodate the Magistrates; and if so, or whether it would be necessary to return to the Court house in order to hasten proceedings to the end that he (Dr. Ulswater) and his accomplice might be hung before the shades of evening softly descended, in the interests of justice and the destinies of Zionville; and if so, whether he would accept or decline the said proposition,—

“Doctor,” said Louisa, sliding in like syrup. “Allow me to state briefly a few pertinent facts. Zionville is a moral town. It's the moralest town you ever saw. But, sir, we see the necessity of getting this atmospheric morality embodied in substantial institutions. We have already a high school with an Eastern college graduate at the head. We have three churches provided with clergymen, not one of whom dares show himself on the street without a choke collar. And, sir, we have a cemetery; that is, so far as a fence around it, and an excellent grave, well excavated, goes toward providing such an institution; which, however, public opinion is unanimous it don't go far enough. For there was once a time in Zionville when there'd have been no particular difficulty on this point, but those days are passed. In those days, when anybody was dead,—as might happen perhaps by perforation, and airiness in vital parts,—and if he was worth while, we used to ship him to Sacramento to get a ceremony ready made; and if he wasn't worth while, we didn't take much notice where he was planted; and therefore there wasn't any cemetery that anybody could find if he wanted one. Such were our customs and traditions in those days. But Zionville reformed. She took up with sackcloth. She sat down to mourn, and she rose up reformed. 'Morals,' she says, 'shall be my watchword. Morals,' she says, 'that's me.' Sir, since then there ain't anybody died in Zionville whatsoever, none whatever at all. But sometime ago there was a man named Jim Tweedy, who got indented with a chimney falling on him, to that extent he looked not only dead but disreputable, and you couldn't have told him from any other miscellaneous dÉbris. And one of our esteemed citizens, named Pete Chapel, he got officious and jubilant, and went off by himself, and dug a sepulchre on some land that belonged to him out the end of Main Street. But was Jim Tweedy dead? Doctor, he was not! But he played off he was for forty-eight hours, and then he came to, and looks around the corners of himself, and says, 'Blamed if I ain't all triangles!' but he wouldn't have a thing to do with that location Pete Chapel had fixed up for him particular. He rejected it with indignation. Indeed, he was perhaps not justly to be blamed, though he's never had the standing in the community he had before, on account of our feeling he was a man that couldn't be relied on when public interest was concerned, besides looking discreditable on account of indentations in his surface; nor it couldn't be denied that Pete Chapel's position was uneasy too, seeing it was allowed as up to him to provide something for the situation. So he put up Tweedy's grave for a raffle, and it fetched a good price, over the value of the land about it, on account of public spirit in the town. After that it changed hands considerable, the price fluctuating according to rumours of indispositions, or strangers in town looking warlike. It went up and down till it got to be a sort of thermometer of Zionville's condition of depression, or confidence in its destiny. At last it fell into the hands of William C. Jones, here present, who donated it to Zionville, and Zionville put a fence around the property and denominated the same a Cemetery. Such and so far is the history of this institution. But, sir, we feel that our Cemetery has not as yet attained its proper standing in our community by formally entering upon its career of public usefulness. Our morality forbids the thought of too direct action to that end. It has been suggested that time would remedy this want. True. But meanwhile Zionville sees its progress stayed, its development halted. Now, sir, Zionville discerns in Mrs. Atkins an extraordinary fitness for this purpose. William C. Jones and I have consulted. We discern a rare opportunity, a crisis in Zionville's history. We have consulted with our fellow citizens, and they have took to the idea like a nigger to a watermelon. Our determination is inflexible. A monument has been ordered from Sacramento. The ceremonies are arranged whereby to plant Mrs. Atkins, whereby to inaugurate our Cemetery conformable to the spirit of our citizens. The San Francisco press has been notified to send representatives. All is prepared. Name your price, sir. It's yours. Name your conditions. They're granted. The antecedents of Mrs. Atkins are the most essential elements in her value, and we hope to see them, in your own eloquent language, indelibly engraven on the monument.”

“Why, bless my soul!” said Dr. Ulswater. “What good would a Peruvian mummy do you? Why don't you bury a buffalo and call it a bishop? What's the idea?”

“Fame,” said Louisa.

“Fame? fame? But look here! Mummies belong in museums!”

“Very good,” said Louisa. “Ain't a cemetery a museum? Alas, sir! a collection of various mortality?”

“Dear, dear! You'll be the death of me.”

“Whether it shall be possible,” began William C. Jones, “to avoid compassing your decease through obstinacy and public interests, being the object of this interview; and if so——”

“Your honour,” said Dr. Ulswater with a grand gesture. Nobody could beat him for elegance when he was in trim—“Your honour,” he said, interrupting W. C. and addressing Louisa, “I beg the privilege of donating Hannah Atkins to Zionville, and to the service of her fame. To the interests of archaeology Zionville is more than a legion of mummies.”

Louisa ran to the window, thrust his hat through the bars and waved it, and we heard Zionville break forth in one simultaneous pean.

But when Dr. Ulswater and I came out of the jail and joined the rejoicing, when—as the subject and centre of rejoicing—we came down opposite Babbitt's Hotel, there we saw, on the veranda of it, Sadler six feet two, and engaged in sinister meditation against a green pillar. Then I knew he had written the Letter to the Magistrates.

He came down from the veranda to join the rejoicing, and when I claimed to see into his insidious villainy, he looked depressed; but Dr. Ulswater was surprised and delighted.

“By hookey!” he said,—For since his marriage to Mrs. Ulswater he had come to swear always by innocuous things, and he was hard put to it sometimes for satisfaction; hence sometimes his objurgations were familiar, and sometimes recondite.—“By hookey!” he said, “Sadler, I knew there was something Zionville reminded me of. It was you!”

“I belonged to her,” said Sadler, sadly, walking along with us—“before she reformed. She wollered in her nakedness then, and we both found out that sin was monotonous. Since then we've each took a shy at the spiritual life and found it was sportier'n the other. But still I don't know if her Sunday School clothes will fit me. But, doctor,” he concluded, “if it suits you and Mrs. Ulswater to sojourn and abide here, I'll try on them clothes.”