"The occurrence is totally unaccountable upon any reasonable theory," said the doctor, "and I do not know what to believe, unless we are to conceive that the tooth and the ball were really meteoric stones that have assumed these remarkable shapes and been shot down upon the earth with such force as to penetrate Mr. Dingus' leg, and this is so very improbable that we can hardly accept it unless it is impossible to find any other. Hallo! What's the matter with you, Potts? Your mouth and shirt are all stained with blood!"
"Oh, nothing," said Potts, forgetting himself. "I just lost a tooth, and--"
"You lost a--Who pulled it?" asked the doctor.
"Gentlemen," said Potts, "the fact is I shot it out with my gun."
Then they put Potts under bail for attempted assassination, and Dingus said that as soon as he got well he would bang Mr. Potts with a club. When the crowd had gone, the coroner said to Potts,
"You're a mean sort of a man, now, ain't you?"
"Well, Mr. Maginn," replied Potts, "I really didn't know Mr. Dingus was there; and the gun went off accidentally, any way."
"Oh, it isn't that," said the coroner--"it isn't that. I don't mind your shooting him, but why in the thunder didn't you kill him while you were at it, and give me a chance? You want to see me starve, don't you? I wish you'd a buried the tooth in his lung and the ball in his liver, and then I'd a had my regular fees. But as it is, I have all the bother and get nothing. I'd starve to death if all men were like you."
And Potts went away with a dim impression that he had injured Maginn rather more than Mr. Dingus.
Coroner Maginn's condition, however, is one of chronic discontent. Upon the occasion of a recent encounter with him I said to him,
"Business seems to be dull to-day, Mr. Maginn."
"Dull! Well, that's just no name for it. This is the deadest town I ever--Well, exceptin' Jim Busby's tumblin' off the market-house last month, there hasn't been a decent accident in this place since last summer. How'm I goin' to live, I want to know? In other countries people keep things movin'. There are murders and coal-oil explosions and roofs fallin' in--'most always somethin' lively to afford a coroner a chance. But here! Why, I don't get 'nough fees in a year to keep a poll-parrot in water-crackers. I don't--now, that's the honest truth."