Anderson Crow, Detective He was imposing, even in his pensiveness.

There was no denying the fact that he was an important personage in Tinkletown, and to the residents of Tinkletown that meant a great deal, for was not their village a perpetual monument to the American Revolution?
Even the most generalising of historians were compelled to devote at least a paragraph to the battle of Tinkletown, while some of the more enlightened gave a whole page and a picture of the conflict that brought glory to the sleepy inhabitants whose ancestors were enterprising enough to annihilate a whole company of British redcoats, once on a time.
Notwithstanding all this, a particularly disagreeable visitor from the city once remarked, in the presence of half a dozen descendants (after waiting twenty minutes at the post-office for a dime's worth of stamps), that Tinkletown was indeed a monument, but he could not understand why the dead had been left unburied.

There was excellent cause for resentment, but the young man and his stamps were far away before the full force of the slander penetrated the brains of the listeners.
Anderson Crow was as imposing and as rugged as the tallest shaft of marble in the little cemetery on the edge of the town.

No one questioned his power and authority, no one misjudged his altitude, and no one overlooked his dignity.

For twenty-eight years he had served Tinkletown and himself in the triple capacity of town marshal, fire chief and street commissioner.