THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM

[Illustration: NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM. --_Frontispiece_(_Page 18. _)]

THE ESCAPEOF MR. TRIMM

_HIS PLIGHT AND OTHER PLIGHTS_

BY

IRVIN S. COBB

AUTHOR OFOLD JUDGE PRIEST, BACK HOME, ETC. 

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1910, 1911, 1912 AND 1913

BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1913

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

[Transcriber's Note: A List of Illustrations has been added. ]

TO MY WIFE

CONTENTS

 CHAPTER PAGE

 I. THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM 3

 II. THE BELLED BUZZARD 54

 III. AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET 79

 IV. ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES 96

 V. SMOKE OF BATTLE 142

 VI. THE EXIT OF ANNE DUGMORE 179

 VII. TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN 202

 VIII. FISHHEAD 244

 IX. GUILTY AS CHARGED 260

ILLUSTRATIONS

 NOBODY PAID ANY ATTENTION TO MR. TRIMM. Frontispiece

 "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN. " Facing page 70

 "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE. " Facing Page 164

 HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADE A CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW. Facing Page 193

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM

I

THE ESCAPE OF MR. TRIMM

Mr. Trimm, recently president of the late Thirteenth National Bank, wastaking a trip which was different in a number of ways from any he hadever taken. To begin with, he was used to parlor cars and Pullmans andeven luxurious private cars when he went anywhere; whereas now he rodewith a most mixed company in a dusty, smelly day coach. In the secondplace, his traveling companion was not such a one as Mr. Trimm wouldhave chosen had the choice been left to him, being a stupid-lookingGerman-American with a drooping, yellow mustache. And in the thirdplace, Mr. Trimm's plump white hands were folded in his lap, held in aclose and enforced companionship by a new and shiny pair of Bean'sLatest Model Little Giant handcuffs. Mr. Trimm was on his way to theFederal penitentiary to serve twelve years at hard labor for breaking, one way or another, about all the laws that are presumed to governnational banks. 

 * * * * *

All the time Mr. Trimm was in the Tombs, fighting for a new trial, acertain question had lain in his mind unasked and unanswered. Throughthe seven months of his stay in the jail that question had been alwaysat the back part of his head, ticking away there like a little watchthat never needed winding. A dozen times a day it would pop into histhoughts and then go away, only to come back again. 

When Copley was taken to the penitentiary--Copley being the cashier whogot off with a lighter sentence because the judge and jury held him tobe no more than a blind accomplice in the wrecking of the ThirteenthNational--Mr. Trimm read closely every line that the papers carriedabout Copley's departure. But none of them had seen fit to give theyoung cashier more than a short and colorless paragraph. For Copley wasonly a small figure in the big intrigue that had startled the country;Copley didn't have the money to hire big lawyers to carry his appeal tothe higher courts for him; Copley's wife was keeping boarders; and asfor Copley himself, he had been wearing stripes several months now. 

With Mr. Trimm it had been vastly different. From the very beginning hehad held the public eye. His bearing in court when the jury came in withtheir judgment; his cold defiance when the judge, in pronouncingsentence, mercilessly arraigned him and the system of finance for whichhe stood; the manner of his life in the Tombs; his spectacular fight tobeat the verdict, had all been worth columns of newspaper space. If Mr. Trimm had been a popular poisoner, or a society woman named asco-respondent in a sensational divorce suit, the papers could not havebeen more generous in their space allotments. And Mr. Trimm in his cellhad read all of it with smiling contempt, even to the semi-hystericaloutpourings of the lady special writers who called him The Iron Man ofWall Street and undertook to analyze his emotions--and missed the markby a thousand miles or two. 

Things had been smoothed as much as possible for him in the Tombs, formoney and the power of it will go far toward ironing out even thecorrugated routine of that big jail. He had a large cell to himself inthe airiest, brightest corridor. His meals were served by a caterer fromoutside. Although he ate them without knife or fork, he soon learnedthat a spoon and the fingers can accomplish a good deal when backed by agood appetite, and Mr. Trimm's appetite was uniformly good. The wardenand his underlings had been models of official kindliness; thenewspapers had sent their brightest young men to interview him wheneverhe felt like talking, which wasn't often; and surely his lawyers haddone all in his behalf that money--a great deal of money--could do. Perhaps it was because of these things that Mr. Trimm had never beenable to bring himself to realize that he was the Hobart W. Trimm who hadbeen sentenced to the Federal prison; it seemed to him, somehow, thathe, personally, was merely a spectator standing to one side watching thefight of another man to dodge the penitentiary. 

However, he didn't fail to give the other man the advantage of everychance that money would buy. This sense of aloofness to the whole thinghad persisted even when his personal lawyer came to him one night in theearly fall and told him that the court of last possible resort haddenied the last possible motion. Mr. Trimm cut the lawyer short with ashake of his head as the other began saying something about the chancesof a pardon from the President. Mr. Trimm wasn't in the habit of lettingmen deceive him with idle words. No President would pardon him, and heknew it. 

"Never mind that, Walling, " he said steadily, when the lawyer offered tocome to see him again before he started for prison the next day. "Ifyou'll see that a drawing-room on the train is reserved for me--for us, I mean--and all that sort of thing, I'll not detain you any further. Ihave a good many things to do tonight. Good night. "

"Such a man, such a man, " said Walling to himself as he climbed intohis car; "all chilled steel and brains. And they are going to lock thatbrain up for twelve years. It's a crime, " said Walling, and shook hishead. Walling always said it was a crime when they sent a client of histo prison. To his credit be it said, though, they sent very few of themthere. Walling made as high as fifty thousand a year at criminal law. Some of it was very criminal law indeed. His specialty was picking holesin the statutes faster than the legislature could make them and providethem and putty them up with amendments. This was the first case he hadlost in a good long time. 

 * * * * *

When Jerry, the turnkey, came for him in the morning Mr. Trimm had madeas careful a toilet as the limited means at his command permitted, andhe had eaten a hearty breakfast and was ready to go, all but putting onhis hat. Looking the picture of well-groomed, close-buttoned, iron-graymiddle age, Mr. Trimm followed the turnkey through the long corridor anddown the winding iron stairs to the warden's office. He gave no heed tothe curious eyes that followed him through the barred doors of manycells; his feet rang briskly on the flags. 

The warden, Hallam, was there in the private office with another man, atall, raw-boned man with a drooping, straw-colored mustache and theunmistakable look about him of the police officer. Mr. Trimm knewwithout being told that this was the man who would take him to prison. The stranger was standing at a desk, signing some papers. 

"Sit down, please, Mr. Trimm, " said the warden with a nervouscordiality. "Be through here in just one minute. This is Deputy MarshalMeyers, " he added. 

Mr. Trimm started to tell this Mr. Meyers he was glad to meet him, butcaught himself and merely nodded. The man stared at him with neitherinterest nor curiosity in his dull blue eyes. The warden moved overtoward the door. 

"Mr. Trimm, " he said, clearing his throat, "I took the liberty ofcalling a cab to take you gents up to the Grand Central. It's out frontnow. But there's a big crowd of reporters and photographers and a lot ofother people waiting, and if I was you I'd slip out the back way--one ofmy men will open the yard gate for you--and jump aboard the subway downat Worth Street. Then you'll miss those fellows. "

"Thank you, Warden--very kind of you, " said Mr. Trimm in that crisp, businesslike way of his. He had been crisp and businesslike all hislife. He heard a door opening softly behind him, and when he turned tolook he saw the warden slipping out, furtively, in almost an embarrassedfashion. 

"Well, " said Meyers, "all ready?"

"Yes, " said Mr. Trimm, and he made as if to rise. 

"Wait one minute, " said Meyers. 

He half turned his back on Mr. Trimm and fumbled at the side pocket ofhis ill-hanging coat. Something inside of Mr. Trimm gave the leastlittle jump, and the question that had ticked away so busily all thosemonths began to buzz, buzz in his ears; but it was only a handkerchiefthe man was getting out. Doubtless he was going to mop his face. 

He didn't mop his face, though. He unrolled the handkerchief slowly, asif it contained something immensely fragile and valuable, and then, thrusting it back in his pocket, he faced Mr. Trimm. He was carrying inhis hands a pair of handcuffs that hung open-jawed. The jaws had littlenotches in them, like teeth that could bite. The question that hadticked in Mr. Trimm's head was answered at last--in the sight of thesesteel things with their notched jaws. 

Mr. Trimm stood up and, with a movement as near to hesitation as he hadever been guilty of in his life, held out his hands, backs upward. 

"I guess you're new at this kind of thing, " said Meyers, grinning. "Thishere way--one at a time. "

He took hold of Mr. Trimm's right hand, turned it sideways and settledone of the steel cuffs over the top of the wrist, flipping the notchedjaw up from beneath and pressing it in so that it locked automaticallywith a brisk little click. Slipping the locked cuff back and forth onMr. Trimm's lower arm like a man adjusting a part of machinery, and thenbringing the left hand up to meet the right, he treated it the same way. Then he stepped back. 

Mr. Trimm hadn't meant to protest. The word came unbidden. 

"This--this isn't necessary, is it?" he asked in a voice that was huskyand didn't seem to belong to him. 

"Yep, " said Meyers. "Standin' orders is play no favorites and take nochances. But you won't find them things uncomfortable. Lightest pairthere was in the office, and I fixed 'em plenty loose. "

For half a minute Mr. Trimm stood like a rooster hypnotized by achalkmark, his arms extended, his eyes set on his bonds. His hands hadfallen perhaps four inches apart, and in the space between his wrists alittle chain was stretched taut. In the mounting tumult that filled hisbrain there sprang before Mr. Trimm's consciousness a phrase he hadheard or read somewhere, the title of a story or, perhaps, it was aheadline--The Grips of the Law. The Grips of the Law were upon Mr. Trimm--he felt them now for the first time in these shiny wristlets andthis bit of chain that bound his wrists and filled his whole body with astrange, sinking feeling that made him physically sick. A sudden sweatbeaded out on Mr. Trimm's face, turning it slick and wet. 

He had a handkerchief, a fine linen handkerchief with a hemstitchedborder and a monogram on it, in the upper breast pocket of his buttonedcoat. He tried to reach it. His hands went up, twisting awkwardly likecrab claws. The fingers of both plucked out the handkerchief. Holding itso, Mr. Trimm mopped the sweat away. The links of the handcuffs fell inupon one another and lengthened out again at each movement, filling theroom with a smart little sound. 

He got the handkerchief stowed away with the same clumsiness. He raisedthe manacled hands to his hat brim, gave it a downward pull that broughtit over his face and then, letting his short arms slide down upon hisplump stomach, he faced the man who had put the fetters upon him, squaring his shoulders back. But it was hard, somehow, for him to squarehis shoulders--perhaps because of his hands being drawn so closelytogether. And his eyes would waver and fall upon his wrists. Mr. Trimmhad a feeling that the skin must be stretched very tight on his jawbonesand his forehead. 

"Isn't there some way to hide these--these things?"

He began by blurting and ended by faltering it. His hands shuffledtogether, one over, then under the other. 

"Here's a way, " said Meyers. "This'll help. "

He bestirred himself, folding one of the chained hands upon the other, tugging at the white linen cuffs and drawing the coat sleeves of hisprisoner down over the bonds as far as the chain would let them come. 

"There's the notion, " he said. "Just do that-a-way and them braceletswon't hardly show a-tall. Ready? Let's be movin', then. "

But handcuffs were never meant to be hidden. Merely a pair of steelrings clamped to one's wrists and coupled together with a scrap ofchain, but they'll twist your arms and hamper the movements of your bodyin a way to constantly catch the eye of the passer-by. When a man iscoming toward you, you can tell that he is handcuffed before you see thecuffs. 

Mr. Trimm was never able to recall afterward exactly how he got out ofthe Tombs. He had a confused memory of a gate that was swung open bysome one whom Mr. Trimm saw only from the feet to the waist; then he andhis companion were out on Lafayette Street, speeding south toward thesubway entrance at Worth Street, two blocks below, with the marshal'shand cupped under Mr. Trimm's right elbow and Mr. Trimm's plump legsalmost trotting in their haste. For a moment it looked as if thewarden's well-meant artifice would serve them. 

But New York reporters are up to the tricks of people who want to evadethem. At the sight of them a sentry reporter on the corner shouted awarning which was instantly caught up and passed on by another picketstationed half-way down the block; and around the wall of the Tombs camepelting a flying mob of newspaper photographers and reporters, with achoice rabble behind them. Foot passengers took up the chase, notknowing what it was about, but sensing a free show. Truckmen haltedtheir teams, jumped down from their wagon seats and joined in. Aman-chase is one of the pleasantest outdoor sports that a big city likeNew York can offer its people. 

Fairly running now, the manacled banker and the deputy marshal shot downthe winding steps into the subway a good ten yards ahead of the foremostpursuers. But there was one delay, while Meyers skirmished with his freehand in his trousers' pocket for a dime for the tickets, and anotherbefore a northbound local rolled into the station. Shouted at, jeeredat, shoved this way and that, panting in gulping breaths, for he wasstout by nature and staled by lack of exercise, Mr. Trimm, with Meyersclutching him by the arm, was fairly shot aboard one of the cars, at theapex of a human wedge. The astonished guard sensed the situation as thescrooging, shoving, noisy wave rolled across the platform toward thedoors which he had opened and, thrusting the officer and his prisonerinto the narrow platform space behind him, he tried to form with hisbody a barrier against those who came jamming in. 

It didn't do any good. He was brushed away, protesting and blustering. The excitement spread through the train, and men, and even women, lefttheir seats, overflowing the aisles. 

There is no crueler thing than a city crowd, all eyes and morbidcuriosity. But Mr. Trimm didn't see the staring eyes on that ride to theGrand Central. What he saw was many shifting feet and a hedge of legsshutting him in closely--those and the things on his wrists. What theeyes of the crowd saw was a small, stout man who, for all his bulk, seemed to have dried up inside his clothes so that they bagged on himsome places and bulged others, with his head tucked on his chest, hishat over his face and his fingers straining to hold his coat sleevesdown over a pair of steel bracelets. 

Mr. Trimm gave mental thanks to a Deity whose existence he thought hehad forgotten when the gate of the train-shed clanged behind him, shutting out the mob that had come with them all the way. Cameras hadbeen shoved in his face like gun muzzles, reporters had scuttledalongside him, dodging under Meyers' fending arm to shout questions inhis ears. He had neither spoken nor looked at them. The sweat still randown his face, so that when finally he raised his head in thecomparative quiet of the train-shed his skin was a curious gray underthe jail paleness like the color of wet wood ashes. 

"My lawyer promised to arrange for a compartment--for some private placeon the train, " he said to Meyers. "The conductor ought to know. "

They were the first words he had uttered since he left the Tombs. Meyersspoke to a jaunty Pullman conductor who stood alongside the car wherethey had halted. 

"No such reservation, " said the conductor, running through his sheaf ofslips, with his eyes shifting from Mr. Trimm's face to Mr. Trimm's handsand back again, as though he couldn't decide which was the moreinteresting part of him; "must be some mistake. Or else it was for someother train. Too late to change now--we pull out in three minutes. "

"I reckon we better git on the smoker, " said Meyers, "if there's roomthere. "

Mr. Trimm was steered back again the length of the train through adouble row of pop-eyed porters and staring trainmen. At the steps wherethey stopped the instinct to stretch out one hand and swing himself upby the rail operated automatically and his wrists got a nasty twist. Meyers and a brakeman practically lifted him up the steps and Meyersheaded him into a car that was hazy with blue tobacco smoke. He wasconfused in his gait, almost as if his lower limbs had been fettered, too. 

The car was full of shirt-sleeved men who stood up, craning their necksand stumbling over each other in their desire to see him. These men cameout into the aisle, so that Meyers had to shove through them. 

"This here'll do as well as any, I guess, " said Meyers. He drew Mr. Trimm past him into the seat nearer the window and sat down alongsidehim on the side next the aisle, settling himself on the stuffy plushseat and breathing deeply, like a man who had got through the hardestpart of a not easy job. 

"Smoke?" he asked. 

Mr. Trimm shook his head without raising it. 

"Them cuffs feel plenty easy?" was the deputy's next question. He liftedMr. Trimm's hands as casually as if they had been his hands and not Mr. Trimm's, and looked at them. 

"Seem to be all right, " he said as he let them fall back. "Don't pinchnone, I reckon?" There was no answer. 

The deputy tugged a minute at his mustache, searching his arid mind. Anidea came to him. He drew a newspaper from his pocket, opened it outflat and spread it over Mr. Trimm's lap so that it covered the chainedwrists. Almost instantly the train was in motion, moving through theyards. 

 * * * * *

"Be there in two hours more, " volunteered Meyers. It was late afternoon. They were sliding through woodlands with occasional openings whichshowed meadows melting into wide, flat lands. 

"Want a drink?" said the deputy, next. "No? Well, I guess I'll have adrop myself. Travelin' fills a feller's throat full of dust. " He got up, lurching to the motion of the flying train, and started forward to thewater cooler behind the car door. He had gone perhaps two-thirds of theway when Mr. Trimm felt a queer, grinding sensation beneath his feet; itwas exactly as though the train were trying to go forward and back atthe same time. Almost slowly, it seemed to him, the forward end of thecar slued out of its straight course, at the same time tilting up. Therewas a grinding, roaring, grating sound, and before Mr. Trimm's eyesMeyers vanished, tumbling forward out of sight as the car floor buckledunder his feet. Then, as everything--the train, the earth, the sky--allfused together in a great spatter of white and black, Mr. Trimm, pluckedfrom his seat as though a giant hand had him by the collar, shot forwardthrough the air over the seatbacks, his chained hands aloft, clutchingwildly. He rolled out of a ragged opening where the smoker had broken intwo, flopped gently on the sloping side of the right-of-way and slideasily to the bottom, where he lay quiet and still on his back in a bedof weeds and wild grass, staring straight up. 

How many minutes he lay there Mr. Trimm didn't know. It may have beenthe shrieks of the victims or the glare from the fire that brought himout of the daze. He wriggled his body to a sitting posture, got on hisfeet, holding his head between his coupled hands, and gazed full-faceinto the crowning railroad horror of the year. 

There were numbers of the passengers who had escaped serious hurt, butfor the most part these persons seemed to have gone daft from terror andshock. Some were running aimlessly up and down and some, a few, werepecking feebly with improvised tools at the wreck, an indescribablejumble of ruin, from which there issued cries of mortal agony, and fromwhich, at a point where two locomotives were lying on their sides, jammed together like fighting bucks that had died with locked horns, atall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of blacksmoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobodypaid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. Therewasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat wasstill on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a suddenimpulse, he turned round and went running straight away from therailroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with hisarms pumping up and down in front of him and his fingers interlaced. Itwas a grotesque gait, almost like a rabbit hopping on its hindlegs. 

Instantly, almost, the friendly woods growing down to the edge of thefill swallowed him up. He dodged and doubled back and forth among thetree trunks, his small, patent-leathered feet skipping nimbly over theirregular turf, until he stopped for lack of wind in his lungs to carryhim another rod. When he had got his breath back Mr. Trimm leanedagainst a tree and bent his head this way and that, listening. No soundcame to his ears except the sleepy calls of birds. As well as Mr. Trimmmight judge he had come far into the depths of a considerable woodland. Already the shadows under the low limbs were growing thick and confusedas the hurried twilight of early September came on. 

Mr. Trimm sat down on a natural cushion of thick green moss between tworoots of an oak. The place was clean and soft and sweet-scented. Forsome little time he sat there motionless, in a sort of mental haze. Thenhis round body slowly slid down flat upon the moss, his head lolled toone side and, the reaction having come, Mr. Trimm's limbs all relaxedand he went to sleep straightway. 

After a while, when the woods were black and still, the half-grown mooncame up and, sifting through a chink in the canopy of leaves above, shone down full on Mr. Trimm as he lay snoring gently with his mouthopen, and his hands rising and falling on his breast. The moonlightstruck upon the Little Giant handcuffs, making them look likequicksilver. 

Toward daylight it turned off sharp and cool. The dogwoods which hadbeen a solid color at nightfall now showed pink in one light and greenin another, like changeable silk, as the first level rays of the suncame up over the rim of the earth and made long, golden lanes betweenthe tree trunks. Mr. Trimm opened his eyes slowly, hardly sensing forthe first moment or two how he came to be lying under a canopy ofleaves, and gaped, seeking to stretch his arms. At that he rememberedeverything; he haunched his shoulders against the tree roots andwriggled himself up to a sitting position where he stayed for a while, letting his mind run over the sequence of events that had brought himwhere he was and taking inventory of the situation. 

Of escape he had no thought. The hue and cry must be out for him beforenow; doubtless men were already searching for him. It would be betterfor him to walk in and surrender than to be taken in the woods like ananimal escaped from a traveling menagerie. But the mere thought ofenduring again what he had already gone through--the thought of beingtagged by crowds and stared at, with his fetters on--filled him with anausea. Nothing that the Federal penitentiary might hold in store forhim could equal the black, blind shamefulness of yesterday; he knewthat. The thought of the new ignominy that faced him made Mr. Trimmdesperate. He had a desire to burrow into the thicket yonder and hidehis face and his chained hands. 

But perhaps he could get the handcuffs off and so go to meet his captorsin some manner of dignity. Strange that the idea hadn't occurred to himbefore! It seemed to Mr. Trimm that he desired to get his two handsapart more than he had ever desired anything in his whole life before. 

The hands had begun naturally to adjust themselves to their enforcedcompanionship, and it wasn't such a very hard matter, though it cost himsome painful wrenches and much twisting of the fingers, for Mr. Trimm toget his coat unbuttoned and his eyeglasses in their small leather caseout of his upper waistcoat pocket. With the glasses on his nose hesubjected his bonds to a critical examination. Each rounded steel bandran unbroken except for the smooth, almost jointless hinge and the smalllock which sat perched on the back of the wrist in a little roundedexcrescence like a steel wart. In the flat center of each lock was asmall keyhole and alongside of it a notched nub, the nub being sunk in aminute depression. On the inner side, underneath, the cuffs slid intothemselves--two notches on each showing where the jaws might betightened to fit a smaller hand than his--and right over the large blueveins in the middle of the wrists were swivel links, shackle-bolted tothe cuffs and connected by a flat, slightly larger middle link, givingthe hands a palm-to-palm play of not more than four or five inches. Thecuffs did not hurt--even after so many hours there was no actualdiscomfort from them and the flesh beneath them was hardly reddened. 

But it didn't take Mr. Trimm long to find out that they were not to begot off. He tugged and pulled, trying with his fingers for a purchase. All he did was to chafe his skin and make his wrists throb with pain. The cuffs would go forward just so far, then the little humps of boneabove the hands would catch and hold them. 

Mr. Trimm was not a man to waste time in the pursuit of the obviouslyhopeless. Presently he stood up, shook himself and started off at a fairgait through the woods. The sun was up now and the turf was all dappledwith lights and shadows, and about him much small, furtive wild life wasstirring. He stepped along briskly, a strange figure for that greensolitude, with his correct city garb and the glint of the steel at hissleeve ends. 

Presently he heard the long-drawn, quavering, banshee wail of alocomotive. The sound came from almost behind him, in an oppositedirection from where he supposed the track to be. So he turned aroundand went back the other way. He crossed a half-dried-up runlet andclimbed a small hill, neither of which he remembered having met in hisnight from the wreck, and in a little while he came out upon therailroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. Tothe south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbrokenwoodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge againstthe horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck--whichwas still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had comeout of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's considerationhe decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon he could distinguish smalldots like ants moving in and out about the black spot, and he knew thesedots must be men. 

A whining, whirring sound came along the rails to him from behind. Hefaced about just as a handcar shot out around the curve from the north, moving with amazing rapidity under the strokes of four men at the pumps. Other men, laborers to judge by their blue overalls, were sitting on theedges of the car with their feet dangling. For the second time withintwelve hours impulse ruled Mr. Trimm, who wasn't given to impulsesnormally. He made a jump off the right-of-way, and as the handcarflashed by he watched its flight from the covert of a weed tangle. 

But even as the handcar was passing him Mr. Trimm regretted hishastiness. He must surrender himself sooner or later; why not to theseoveralled laborers, since it was a thing that had to be done? He slidout of hiding and came trotting back to the tracks. Already the handcarwas a hundred yards away, flitting into distance like some big, wonderfully fast bug, the figures of the men at the pumps rising andfalling with a walking-beam regularity. As he stood watching them fadeaway and minded to try hailing them, yet still hesitating against hisjudgment, Mr. Trimm saw something white drop from the hands of one ofthe blue-clad figures on the handcar, unfold into a newspaper and comefluttering back along the tracks toward him. Just as he, startingdoggedly ahead, met it, the little ground breeze that had carried italong died out and the paper dropped and flattened right in front ofhim. The front page was uppermost and he knew it must be of thatmorning's issue, for across the column tops ran the flaring headline:"Twenty Dead in Frightful Collision. "

Squatting on the cindered track, Mr. Trimm patted the crumpled sheetflat with his hands. His eyes dropped from the first of the glaringcaptions to the second, to the next--and then his heart gave a greatbound inside of him and, clutching up the newspaper to his breast, hebounded off the tracks back into another thicket and huddled there withthe paper spread on the earth in front of him, reading by gulps whilethe chain that linked wrist to wrist tinkled to the tremors runningthrough him. What he had seen first, in staring black-face type, was hisown name leading the list of known dead, and what he saw now, broken upinto choppy paragraphs and done in the nervous English of a trainedreporter throwing a great news story together to catch an edition, buttelling a clear enough story nevertheless, was a narrative in which hisname recurred again and again. The body of the United States deputymarshal, Meyers, frightfully crushed, had been taken from the wreckageof the smoker--so the double-leaded story ran--and near to Meyersanother body, with features burned beyond recognition, yet stillretaining certain distinguishing marks of measurement and contour, hadbeen found and identified as that of Hobart W. Trimm, the convictedbanker. The bodies of these two, with eighteen other mangled dead, hadbeen removed to a town called Westfield, from which town of Westfieldthe account of the disaster had been telegraphed to the New York paper. In another column farther along was more about Banker Trimm; facts abouthis soiled, selfish, greedy, successful life, his great fortune, histrial, and a statement that, lacking any close kin to claim his body, his lawyers had been notified. 

Mr. Trimm read the account through to the end, and as he read the senseof dominant, masterful self-control came back to him in waves. He gotup, taking the paper with him, and went back into the deeper woods, moving warily and watchfully. As he went his mind, trained to take holdof problems and wring the essence out of them, was busy. Of the charred, grisly thing in the improvised morgue at Westfield, wherever that mightbe, Mr. Trimm took no heed nor wasted any pity. All his life he had usedlive men to work his will, with no thought of what might come to themafterward. The living had served him, why not the dead?

He had other things to think of than this dead proxy of his. He was asgood as free! There would be no hunt for him now; no alarm out, noposses combing every scrap of cover for a famous criminal turnedfugitive. He had only to lie quiet a few days, somewhere, then get insecret touch with Walling. Walling would do anything for money. And hehad the money--four millions and more, cannily saved from the crash thathad ruined so many others. 

He would alter his personal appearance, change his name--he thought ofDuvall, which was his mother's name--and with Walling's aid he would getout of the country and into some other country where a man might livelike a prince on four millions or the fractional part of it. He thoughtof South America, of South Africa, of a private yacht swinging throughthe little frequented islands of the South Seas. All that the law hadtried to take from him would be given back. Walling would work out thedetails of the escape--and make it safe and sure--trust Walling forthose things. On one side was the prison, with its promise of twelvegrinding years sliced out of the very heart of his life; on the other, freedom, ease, security, even power. Through Mr. Trimm's mind tumbledthoughts of concessions, enterprises, privileges--the back corners ofthe globe were full of possibilities for the right man. And between thisprospect and Mr. Trimm there stood nothing in the way, nothing but----

Mr. Trimm's eyes fell upon his bound hands. Snug-fitting, shiny steelbands irked his wrists. The Grips of the Law were still upon him. 

But only in a way of speaking. It was preposterous, unbelievable, altogether out of the question that a man with four millions salted downand stored away, a man who all his life had been used to grappling withthe big things and wrestling them down into submission, a man whose luckhad come to be a byword--and had not it held good even in this lastemergency?--would be balked by puny scraps of forged steel and atrumpery lock or two. Why, these cuffs were no thicker than the goldbands that Mr. Trimm had seen on the arms of overdressed women at theopera. The chain that joined them was no larger and, probably, nostronger than the chains which Mr. Trimm's chauffeur wrapped around thetires of the touring car in winter to keep the wheels from skidding onthe slush. There would be a way, surely, for Mr. Trimm to free himselffrom these things. There must be--that was all there was to it. 

Mr. Trimm looked himself over. His clothes were not badly rumpled; hispatent-leather boots were scarcely scratched. Without the handcuffs hecould pass unnoticed anywhere. By night then he must be free of them andon his way to some small inland city, to stay quiet there until theguarded telegram that he would send in cipher had reached Walling. Therein the woods by himself Mr. Trimm no longer felt the ignominy of hisbonds; he felt only the temporary embarrassment of them and the need ofadded precaution until he should have mastered them. 

He was once more the unemotional man of affairs who had stood WallStreet on its esteemed head and caught the golden streams that trickledfrom its pockets. First making sure that he was in a well-screenedcovert of the woods he set about exploring all his pockets. The coatpockets were comparatively easy, now that he had got used to using twohands where one had always served, but it cost him a lot of twisting ofhis body and some pain to his mistreated wrist bones to bring forth thecontents of his trousers' pockets. The chain kinked time and again as hegroped with the undermost hand for the openings; his dumpy, pudgy formwrithed grotesquely. But finally he finished. The search produced fourcigars somewhat crumpled and frayed; some matches in a gun-metal case, asilver cigar cutter, two five-dollar bills, a handful of silver chickenfeed, the leather case of the eyeglasses, a couple of quill toothpicks, a gold watch with a dangling fob, a notebook and some papers. Mr. Trimmranged these things in a neat row upon a log, like a watchmaker settingout his kit, and took swift inventory of them. Some he eliminated fromhis design, stowing them back in the pockets easiest to reach. He keptfor present employment the match safe, the cigar cutter and the watch. 

This place where he had halted would suit his present purpose well, hedecided. It was where an uprooted tree, fallen across an incurving bank, made a snug little recess that was closed in on three sides. Spreadingthe newspaper on the turf to save his knees from soiling, he knelt andset to his task. For the time he felt neither hunger nor thirst. He hadfound out during his earlier experiments that the nails of his littlefingers, which were trimmed to a point, could invade the keyholes in thelittle steel warts on the backs of his wrists and touch the locks. Themechanism had even twitched a little bit under the tickle of the nailends. So, having already smashed the gun-metal match safe under hisheel, Mr. Trimm selected a slender-pointed bit from among its fragmentsand got to work, the left hand drawn up under the right, the fingers ofthe right busy with the lock of the left, the chain tightening andslackening with subdued clinking sounds at each movement. 

Mr. Trimm didn't know much about picking a lock. He had got his money bya higher form of burglary that did not require a knowledge of lockpicking. Nor as a boy had he been one to play at mechanics. He had letother boys make the toy fluttermills and the wooden traps and the like, and then he had traded for them. He was sorry now that he hadn't givenmore heed to the mechanical side of things when he was growing up. 

He worked with a deliberate slowness, steadily. Nevertheless, it was hotwork. The sun rose over the bank and shone on him through the limbs ofthe uprooted tree. His hat was on the ground alongside of him. The sweatran down his face, streaking it and wilting his collar flat. The scrapof gun metal kept slipping out of his wet fingers. Down would go thechained hands to scrabble in the grass for it, and then the pickingwould go on again. This happened a good many times. Birds, nervous withthe spirit that presages the fall migration, flew back and forth alongthe creek, almost grazing Mr. Trimm sometimes. A rain crow wove a brownthread in the green warp of the bushes above his head. A chattering redsquirrel sat up on a tree limb to scold him. At intervals, distantly, came the cough of laboring trains, showing that the track must have beencleared. There were times when Mr. Trimm thought he felt the lockgiving. These times he would work harder. 

 * * * * *

Late in the afternoon Mr. Trimm lay back against the bank, panting. Hisface was splotched with red, and the little hollows at the sides of hisforehead pulsed rapidly up and down like the bellies of scared treefrogs. The bent outer case of the watch littered a bare patch on thelog; its mainspring had gone the way of the fragments of the gun-metalmatch safe which were lying all about, each a worn-down, twisted wisp ofmetal. The spring of the eyeglasses had been confiscated long ago andthe broken crystals powdered the earth where Mr. Trimm's toes hadscraped a smooth patch. The nails of the two little fingers were worn tothe quick and splintered down into the raw flesh. There were countlesstiny scratches and mars on the locks of the handcuffs, and the steelwristbands were dulled with blood smears and pale-red tarnishes of newrust; but otherwise they were as stanch and strong a pair of Bean'sLatest Model Little Giant handcuffs as you'd find in any hardware storeanywhere. 

The devilish, stupid malignity of the damned things! With an acid oathMr. Trimm raised his hands and brought them down on the log violently. There was a double click and the bonds tightened painfully, pressing thechafed red skin white. Mr. Trimm snatched up his hands close to hisnear-sighted eyes and looked. One of the little notches on the underside of each cuff had disappeared. It was as if they were living thingsthat had turned and bitten him for the blow he gave them. 

 * * * * *

From the time the sun went down there was a tingle of frost in the air. Mr. Trimm didn't sleep much. Under the squeeze of the tightened fettershis wrists throbbed steadily and racking cramps ran through his arms. His stomach felt as though it were tied into knots. The water that hedrank from the branch only made his hunger sickness worse. Hisundergarments, that had been wet with perspiration, clung to himclammily. His middle-aged, tenderly-cared-for body called through everypore for clean linen and soap and water and rest, as his empty insidescalled for food. 

After a while he became so chilled that the demand for warmth conqueredhis instinct for caution. He felt about him in the darkness, gatheringscraps of dead wood, and, after breaking several of the matches that hadbeen in the gun-metal match safe, he managed to strike one and with itstiny flame started a fire. He huddled almost over the fire, coughingwhen the smoke blew into his face and twisting and pulling at his armsin an effort to get relief from the everlasting cramps. It seemed to himthat if he could only get an inch or two more of play for his hands hewould be ever so much more comfortable. But he couldn't, of course. 

He dozed, finally, sitting crosslegged with his head sunk between hishunched shoulders. A pain in a new place woke him. The fire had burnedalmost through the thin sole of his right shoe, and as he scrambled tohis feet and stamped, the clap of the hot leather flat against hisblistered foot almost made him cry out. 

 * * * * *

Soon after sunrise a boy came riding a horse down a faintly tracedfootpath along the creek, driving a cow with a bell on her neck ahead ofhim. Mr. Trimm's ears caught the sound of the clanking bell beforeeither the cow or her herder was in sight, and he limped away, running, skulking through the thick cover. A pendent loop of a wild grapevine, swinging low, caught his hat and flipped it off his head; but Mr. Trimm, imagining pursuit, did not stop to pick it up and went on bareheadeduntil he had to stop from exhaustion. He saw some dark-red berries on ashrub upon which he had trod, and, stooping, he plucked some of themwith his two hands and put three or four in his mouth experimentally. Warned instantly by the acrid, burning taste, he spat the crushedberries out and went on doggedly, following, according to his bestjudgment, a course parallel to the railroad. It was characteristic ofhim, a city-raised man, that he took no heed of distances nor of thedistinguishing marks of the timber. 

Behind a log at the edge of a small clearing in the woods he halted somelittle time, watching and listening. The clearing had grown up in sumacsand weeds and small saplings and it seemed deserted; certainly it wasstill. Near the center of it rose the sagging roof of what had been ashack or a shed of some sort. Stooping cautiously, to keep his bare headbelow the tops of the sumacs, Mr. Trimm made for the ruined shanty andgained it safely. In the midst of the rotted, punky logs that had onceformed the walls he began scraping with his feet. Presently he uncoveredsomething. It was a broken-off harrow tooth, scaled like a long, redfish with the crusted rust of years. 

Mr. Trimm rested the lower rims of his handcuffs on the edge of an old, broken watering trough, worked the pointed end of the rust-crustedharrow tooth into the flat middle link of the chain as far as it wouldgo, and then with one hand on top of the other he pressed downward withall his might. The pain in his wrists made him stop this at once. Thelink had not sprung or given in the least, but the twisting pressurehad almost broken his wrist bones. He let the harrow tooth fall, knowingthat it would never serve as a lever to free him--which, indeed, he hadknown all along--and sat on the side of the trough, rubbing his wristsand thinking. 

He had another idea. It came into his mind as a vague suggestion thatfire had certain effects upon certain metals. He kindled a fire of bitsof the rotted wood, and when the flames ran together and rose slenderand straight in a single red thread he thrust the chain into it, holdinghis hands as far apart as possible in the attitude of a player about tocatch a bounced ball. But immediately the pain of that grew unendurabletoo, and he leaped back, jerking his hands away. He had succeeded onlyin blackening the steel and putting a big water blister on one of hiswrists right where the shackle bolt would press upon it. 

Where he huddled down in the shelter of one of the fallen walls henoticed, presently, a strand of rusted fence wire still held tohalf-tottering posts by a pair of blackened staples; it was part of apen that had been used once for chickens or swine. Mr. Trimm tried thewire with his fingers. It was firm and springy. Rocking and groaningwith the pain of it, he nevertheless began sliding the chain back andforth, back and forth along the strand of wire. 

Eventually the wire, weakened by age, snapped in two. A tiny shinedspot, hardly deep enough to be called a nick, in its tarnished, smudgedsurface was all the mark that the chain showed. 

Staggering a little and putting his feet down unsteadily, Mr. Trimm leftthe clearing, heading as well as he could tell eastward, away from therailroad. After a mile or two he came to a dusty wood road windingdownhill. 

To the north of the clearing where Mr. Trimm had halted were a farm anda group of farm buildings. To the southward a mile or so was a clusterof dwellings set in the midst of more farm lands, with a shop or two anda small white church with a green spire in the center. Along a road thatran northward from the hamlet to the solitary farm a ten-year-old boycame, carrying a covered tin pail. A young gray squirrel flirted acrossthe wagon ruts ahead of him and darted up a chestnut sapling. The boyput the pail down at the side of the road and began looking for a stoneto throw at the squirrel. 

Mr. Trimm slid out from behind a tree. A hemstitched handkerchief, grimed and stained, was loosely twisted around his wrists, partly hidingthe handcuffs. He moved along with a queer, sliding gait, keeping asmuch of his body as he could turned from the youngster. The ears of thelittle chap caught the faint scuffle of feet and he spun around on hisbare heel. 

"My boy, would you----" Mr. Trimm began. 

The boy's round eyes widened at the apparition that was sidling towardhim in so strange a fashion, and then, taking fright, he dodged past Mr. Trimm and ran back the way he had come, as fast as his slim brown legscould take him. In half a minute he was out of sight round a bend. 

Had the boy looked back he would have seen a still more curiousspectacle than the one that had frightened him. He would have seen a manworth four million dollars down on his knees in the yellow dust, pawingwith chained hands at the tight-fitting lid of the tin pail, and then, when he had got the lid off, drinking the fresh, warm milk which thepail held with great, choking gulps, uttering little mewing, animalsounds as he drank, while the white, creamy milk ran over his chin andsplashed down his breast in little, spurting streams. 

But the boy didn't look back. He ran all the way home and told hismother he had seen a wild man on the road to the village; and later, when his father came in from the fields, he was soundly thrashed forletting the sight of a tramp make him lose a good tin bucket and half agallon of milk worth six cents a quart. 

 * * * * *

The rich, fresh milk put life into Mr. Trimm. He rested the better forit during the early part of that night in a haw thicket. Only thesharp, darting pains in his wrists kept rousing him to temporarywakefulness. In one of those intervals of waking the plan that had beensketchily forming in his mind from the time he had quit the clearing inthe woods took on a definite, fixed shape. But how was he with safety toget the sort of aid he needed, and where?

Canvassing tentative plans in his head, he dozed off again. 

 * * * * *

On a smooth patch of turf behind the blacksmith shop three yokels werelanguidly pitching horseshoes--"quaits" they called them--at a stakedriven in the earth. Just beyond, the woods shredded out into a long, yellow and green peninsula which stretched up almost to the back door ofthe smithy, so that late of afternoons the slanting shadows of thenear-most trees fell on its roof of warped shingles. At the extreme endof this point of woods Mr. Trimm was squatted behind a big boulder, squinting warily through a thick-fringed curtain of ripened goldenrodtops and sumacs, heavy-headed with their dark-red tapers. He had beenthere more than an hour, cautiously waiting his chance to hail theblacksmith, whose figure he could make out in the smoky interior of hisshop, passing back and forth in front of a smudgy forge fire andrattling metal against metal in intermittent fits of professionalactivity. 

From where Mr. Trimm watched to where the horseshoe-pitching game wenton was not more than sixty feet. He could hear what the players said andeven see the little puffs of dust rise when one of them clapped hishands together after a pitch. He judged by the signs of slackeninginterest that they would be stopping soon and, he hoped, going clearaway. 

But the smith loafed out of his shop and, after an exchange of bucolicbanter with the three of them, he took a hand in their game himself. Hewore no coat or waistcoat and, as he poised a horseshoe for his firstcast at the stake, Mr. Trimm saw, pinned flat against the broad strap ofhis suspenders, a shiny, silvery-looking disk. Having pitched the shoe, the smith moved over into the shade, so that he almost touched the clumpof undergrowth that half buried Mr. Trimm's protecting boulder. Thenear-sighted eyes of the fugitive banker could make out then what theflat, silvery disk was, and Mr. Trimm cowered low in his covert behindthe rock, holding his hands down between his knees, fearful that a gleamfrom his burnished wristlets might strike through the screen of weedgrowth and catch the inquiring eye of the smith. So he stayed, notdaring to move, until a dinner horn sounded somewhere in the cluster ofcottages beyond, and the smith, closing the doors of his shop, went awaywith the three yokels. 

Then Mr. Trimm, stooping low, stole back into the deep woods again. Inhis extremity he was ready to risk making a bid for the hire of ablacksmith's aid to rid himself of his bonds, but not a blacksmith whowore a deputy sheriff's badge pinned to his suspenders. 

 * * * * *

He caught himself scraping his wrists up and down again against therough, scrofulous trunk of a shellbark hickory. The irritation wascomforting to the swollen skin. The cuffs, which kept catching on thebark and snagging small fragments of it loose, seemed to Mr. Trimm tohave been a part and parcel of him for a long time--almost as long atime as he could remember. But the hands which they clasped so closeseemed like the hands of somebody else. There was a numbness about themthat made them feel as though they were a stranger's hands which neverhad belonged to him. As he looked at them with a sort of vague curiositythey seemed to swell and grow, these two strange, fettered hands, untilthey measured yards across, while the steel bands shrunk to the thinnessof piano wire, cutting deeper and deeper into the flesh. Then the handsin turn began to shrink down and the cuffs to grow up into great, thickthings as cumbersome as the couplings of a freight car. A voice that Mr. Trimm dimly recognized as his own was saying something about fourmillion dollars over and over again. 

Mr. Trimm roused up and shook his head angrily to clear it. He rubbedhis eyes free of the clouding delusion. It wouldn't do for him to begetting light-headed. 

 * * * * *

On a flat, shelving bluff, forty feet above a cut through which therailroad ran at a point about five miles north of where the collisionhad occurred, a tramp was busy, just before sundown, cooking somethingin an old washboiler that perched precariously on a fire of wood coals. This tramp was tall and spindle-legged, with reddish hair and a pale, beardless, freckled face with no chin to it and not much forehead, sothat it ran out to a peak like the profile of some featherless, unpleasant sort of fowl. The skirts of an old, ragged overcoat dangledgrotesquely about his spare shanks. 

Desperate as his plight had become, Mr. Trimm felt the old sick shame atthe prospect of exposing himself to this knavish-looking vagabond whosehelp he meant to buy with a bribe. It was the sight of a dainty wisp ofsmoke from the wood fire curling upward through the cloudy, damp airthat had brought him limping cautiously across the right-of-way, toclimb the rocky shelf along the cut; but now he hesitated, shielded inthe shadows twenty yards away. It was a whiff of something savory in thewashboiler, borne to him on the still air and almost making him cry outwith eagerness, that drew him forth finally. At the sound of thehalting footsteps the tramp stopped stirring the mess in the washboilerand glanced up apprehensively. As he took in the figure of the newcomerhis eyes narrowed and his pasty, nasty face spread in a grin ofcomprehension. 

"Well, well, well, " he said, leering offensively, "welcome to our city, little stranger. "

Mr. Trimm came nearer, dragging his feet, for they were almost out ofthe wrecks of his patent-leather shoes. His gaze shifted from thetramp's face to the stuff on the fire, his nostrils wrinkling. Thenslowly: "I'm in trouble, " he said, and held out his hands. 

"Wot I'd call a mild way o' puttin' it, " said the tramp coolly. "Thatpurticular kind o' joolry ain't gen'lly wore for pleasure. "

His eyes took on a nervous squint and roved past Mr. Trimm's stoopedfigure down the slope of the hillock. 

"Say, pal, how fur ahead are you of yore keeper?" he demanded, hismanner changing. 

"There is no one after me--no one that I know of, " explained Mr. Trimm. "I am quite alone--I am certain of it. "

"Sure there ain't nobody lookin' fur you?" the other persistedsuspiciously. 

"I tell you I am all alone, " protested Mr. Trimm. "I want your help ingetting these--these things off and sending a message to a friend. You'll be well paid, very well paid. I can pay you more money than youever had in your life, probably, for your help. I can promise----"

He broke off, for the tramp, as if reassured by his words, had stoopedagain to his cooking and was stirring the bubbling contents of thewashboiler with a peeled stick. The smell of the stew, rising strongly, filled Mr. Trimm with such a sharp and an aching hunger that he couldnot speak for a moment. He mastered himself, but the effort left himshaking and gulping. 

"Go on, then, an' tell us somethin' about yourself, " said the freckledman. "Wot brings you roamin' round this here railroad cut with thembracelets on?"

"I was in the wreck, " obeyed Mr. Trimm. "The man with me--theofficer--was killed. I wasn't hurt and I got away into these woods. Butthey think I'm dead too--my name was among the list of dead. "

The other's peaky face lengthened in astonishment. 

"Why, say, " he began, "I read all about that there wreck--seen the listmyself--say, you can't be Trimm, the New York banker? Yes, you are! Wota streak of luck! Lemme look at you! Trimm, the swell financeer, sportin' 'round with the darbies on him all nice an' snug an' reg'lar!Mister Trimm--well, if this ain't rich!"

"My name is Trimm, " said the starving banker miserably. "I've beenwandering about here a great many hours--several days, I think it mustbe--and I need rest and food very much indeed. I don't--don't feel verywell, " he added, his voice trailing off. 

At this his self-control gave way again and he began to quake violentlyas if with an ague. The smell of the cooking overcame him. 

"You don't look so well an' that's a fact, Trimm, " sneered the tramp, resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself athome, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bitetogether--you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two. "

He broke off to chuckle. His mirth made him appear even more repulsivethan before. 

"But looky here, you wus sayin' somethin' about money, " he saidsuddenly. "Le's take a look at all this here money. "

He came over to him and went through Mr. Trimm's pockets. Mr. Trimm saidnothing and stood quietly, making no resistance. The tramp finished aworkmanlike search of the banker's pockets. He looked at the result asit lay in his grimy palm--a moist little wad of bills and somechicken-feed change--and spat disgustedly with a nasty oath. 

"Well, Trimm, " he said, "fur a Wall Street guy seems to me you travelpurty light. About how much did you think you'd get done fur all thispile of wealth?"

"You will be well paid, " said Mr. Trimm, arguing hard; "my friend willsee to that. What I want you to do is to take the money you have therein your hand and buy a cold chisel or a file--any tools that will cutthese things off me. And then you will send a telegram to a certaingentleman in New York. And let me stay with you until we get ananswer--until he comes here. He will pay you well; I promise it. "

He halted, his eyes and his mind again on the bubbling stuff in therusted washboiler. The freckled vagrant studied him through hisred-lidded eyes, kicking some loose embers back into the fire with histoe. 

"I've heard a lot about you one way an' another, Trimm, " he said. "'Tain't as if you wuz some pore down-an'-out devil tryin' to beat thecops out of doin' his bit in stir. You're the way-up, high-an'-mightykind of crook. An' from wot I've read an' heard about you, you nevertoted fair with nobody yet. There wuz that young feller, wot's hisname?--the cashier--him that wuz tried with you. He went along with youin yore games an' done yore work fur you an' you let him go over theroad to the same place you're tryin' to dodge now. Besides, " he addedcunningly, "you come here talkin' mighty big about money, yet I noticeyou ain't carryin' much of it in yore clothes. All I've had to go by isyore word. An' yore word ain't worth much, by all accounts. "

"I tell you, man, that you'll profit richly, " burst out Mr. Trimm, thewords falling over each other in his new panic. "You must help me; I'veendured too much--I've gone through too much to give up now. " He pleadedfast, his hands shaking in a quiver of fear and eagerness as hestretched them out in entreaty and his linked chain shaking with them. Promises, pledges, commands, orders, arguments poured from him. Histormentor checked him with a gesture. 

"You're wot I'd call a bird in the hand, " he chuckled, hugging his slackframe, "an' it ain't fur you to be givin' orders--it's fur me. An', anyway, I guess we ain't a-goin' to be able to make a trade--leastwisenot on yore terms. But we'll do business all right, all right--anyhow, Iwill. "

"What do you mean?" panted Mr. Trimm, full of terror. "You'll help me?"

"I mean this, " said the tramp slowly. He put his hands under hisloose-hanging overcoat and began to fumble at a leather strap about hiswaist. "If I turn you over to the Government I know wot you'll be worth, purty near, by guessin' at the reward; an' besides, it'll maybe help tosquare me up fur one or two little matters. If I turn you loose I ain'tgot nothin' only your word--an' I've got an idea how much faith I kinput in that. "

Mr. Trimm glanced about him wildly. There was no escape. He was fast ina trap which he himself had sprung. The thought of being led to jail, all foul of body and fettered as he was, by this filthy, smirking wretchmade him crazy. He stumbled backward with some insane idea of runningaway. 

"No hurry, no hurry a-tall, " gloated the tramp, enjoying the torture ofthis helpless captive who had walked into his hands. "I ain't goin' tohurt you none--only make sure that you don't wander off an' hurtyourself while I'm gone. Won't do to let you be damagin' yoreself;you're valuable property. Trimm, now, I'll tell you wot we'll do! We'lljust back you up agin one of these trees an' then we'll jest slip thishere belt through yore elbows an' buckle it around behind at the back;an' I kinder guess you'll stay right there till I go down yonder to thatstation that I passed comin' up here an' see wot kind of a bargain I kinstrike up with the marshal. Come on, now, " he threatened with a show ofbluster, reading the resolution that was mounting in Mr. Trimm's face. "Come on peaceable, if you don't want to git hurt. "

Of a sudden Mr. Trimm became the primitive man. He was filled with thoseelemental emotions that make a man see in spatters of crimson. Gatheringstrength from passion out of an exhausted frame, he sprang forward atthe tramp. He struck at him with his head, his shoulders, his knees, hismanacled wrists, all at once. Not really hurt by the puny assault, butcaught by surprise, the freckled man staggered back, clawing at the air, tripped on the washboiler in the fire, and with a yell vanished belowthe smooth edge of the cut. 

Mr. Trimm stole forward and looked over the bluff. Half-way down thecliff on an outcropping shelf of rock the man lay, face downward, motionless. He seemed to have grown smaller and to have shrunk into hisclothes. One long, thin leg was bent up under the skirts of the overcoatin a queer, twisted way, and the cloth of the trouser leg lookedflattened and empty. As Mr. Trimm peered down at him he saw a red stainspreading on the rock under the still, silent figure's head. 

Mr. Trimm turned to the washboiler. It lay on its side, empty, the lastof its recent contents sputtering out into the half-drowned fire. Hestared at this ruin a minute. Then without another look over the cliffedge he stumbled slowly down the hill, muttering to himself as he went. Just as he struck the level it began to rain, gently at first, thenhard, and despite the shelter of the full-leaved forest trees, he wassoon wet through to his skin and dripped water as he lurched alongwithout sense of direction or, indeed, without any active realization ofwhat he was doing. 

 * * * * *

Late that night it was still raining--a cold, steady, autumnal downpour. A huddled figure slowly climbed upon a low fence running about thehouse-yard of the little farm where the boy lived who got thrashed forlosing a milkpail. On the wet top rail, precariously perching, thefigure slipped and sprawled forward in the miry yard. It got up, painfully swaying on its feet. It was Mr. Trimm, looking for food. Hemoved slowly toward the house, tottering with weakness and because ofthe slick mud underfoot; peering near-sightedly this way and thatthrough the murk; starting at every sound and stopping often to listen. 

The outlines of a lean-to kitchen at the back of the house were loomingdead ahead of him when from the corner of the cottage sprang a smallterrier. It made for Mr. Trimm, barking shrilly. He retreated backward, kicking at the little dog and, to hold his balance, striking out withshort, dabby jerks of his fettered hands--they were such motions as theterrier itself might make trying to walk on its hindlegs. Still backingaway, expecting every instant to feel the terrier's teeth in his flesh, Mr. Trimm put one foot into a hotbed with a great clatter of thebreaking glass. He felt the sharp ends of shattered glass tearing andcutting his shin as he jerked free. Recovering himself, he dealt theterrier a lucky kick under the throat that sent it back, yowling, towhere it had come from, and then, as a door jerked open and ahalf-dressed man jumped out into the darkness, Mr. Trimm half hobbled, half fell out of sight behind the woodpile. 

Back and forth along the lower edge of his yard the farmer hunted, withthe whimpering, cowed terrier to guide him, poking in dark corners withthe muzzle of his shotgun for the unseen intruder whose coming hadaroused the household. In a brushpile just over the fence to the eastMr. Trimm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating downon him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting atthe bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in theair. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat hisarms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone andthe force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that theypressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones. 

When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmerwent shivering back indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the grovelingfigure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirringa little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything. 

 * * * * *

The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morningfollowing the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the daypolice force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place wherethe collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking atthe front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The doorwas a Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half mightbe opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this tophalf back. 

A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterablyweary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubbleon the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest ofits owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows, hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps ofbroken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids ascolorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthywith plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet. 

"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What doyou want?"

With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came upoff the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from adirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, asbig as a pigeon's egg. 

"I have come, " said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which thechief could hardly hear--"I have come to surrender myself. I am HobartW. Trimm. "

"I guess you got another thing comin', " said the chief, who was by wayof being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W. Trimm was onlyfifty-two years old. Besides which, he's dead and buried. I guess maybeyou'd better think agin, grandpap, and see if you ain't Methus'lah orthe Wanderin' Jew. "

"I am Hobart W. Trimm, the banker, " whispered the stranger with a sortof wan stubbornness. 

"Go on and prove it, " suggested the chief, more than willing to prolongthe enjoyment of the sensation. It wasn't often in Westfield thatwandering lunatics came a-calling. 

"Got any way to prove it?" he repeated as the visitor stared at him. 

"Yes, " came the creaking, rusted hinge of a voice, "I have. "

Slowly, with struggling attempts, he raised his hands into the chief'ssight. They were horribly swollen hands, red with the dried blood wherethey were not black with the dried dirt; the fingers puffed up out ofshape; the nails broken; they were like the skinned paws of a bear. Andat the wrists, almost buried in the bloated folds of flesh, blackened, rusted, battered, yet still strong and whole, was a tightly-locked pairof Bean's Latest Model Little Giant handcuffs. 

"Great God!" cried the chief, transfixed at the sight. He drew the boltand jerked open the lower half of the door. 

"Come in, " he said, "and lemme get them irons off of you--they must hurtsomething terrible. "

"They can wait, " said Mr. Trimm very feebly, very slowly and veryhumbly. "I have worn them a long, long while--I am used to them. Wouldn't you please get me some food first?"

II

THE BELLED BUZZARD

There was a swamp known as Little Niggerwool, to distinguish it from BigNiggerwool, which lay across the river. It was traversable only by thosewho knew it well--an oblong stretch of tawny mud and tawny water, measuring maybe four miles its longest way and two miles roughly at itswidest; and it was full of cypress and stunted swamp oak, with edgingsof canebrake and rank weeds; and in one place, where a ridge crossed itfrom side to side, it was snaggled like an old jaw with dead treetrunks, rising close-ranked and thick as teeth. It was untenanted ofliving things--except, down below, there were snakes and mosquitoes, anda few wading and swimming fowl; and up above, those big woodpeckers thatthe country people called logcocks--larger than pigeons, with flamingcrests and spiky tails--swooping in their long, loping flight from snagto snag, always just out of gunshot of the chance invader, and utteringa strident cry which matched those surroundings so fitly that it mightwell have been the voice of the swamp itself. 

On one side little Niggerwool drained its saffron waters off into asluggish creek, where summer ducks bred, and on the other it endedabruptly at a natural bank of high ground, along which the countyturnpike ran. The swamp came right up to the road and thrust its fringeof reedy, weedy undergrowth forward as though in challenge to the goodfarm lands that were spread beyond the barrier. At the time I amspeaking of it was mid-summer, and from these canes and weeds andwaterplants there came a smell so rank as almost to be overpowering. They grew thick as a curtain, making a blank green wall taller than aman's head. 

Along the dusty stretch of road fronting the swamp nothing living hadstirred for half an hour or more. And so at length the weed-stemsrustled and parted, and out from among them a man came forth silentlyand cautiously. He was an old man--an old man who had once been fat, butwith age had grown lean again, so that now his skin was by odds toolarge for him. It lay on the back of his neck in folds. Under the chinhe was pouched like a pelican and about the jowls was wattled like aturkey gobbler. 

He came out upon the road slowly and stopped there, switching his legsabsently with the stalk of a horseweed. He was in his shirtsleeves--arespectable, snuffy old figure; evidently a man deliberate in words andthoughts and actions. There was something about him suggestive of an oldstaid sheep that had been engaged in a clandestine transaction and wasafraid of being found out. 

He had made amply sure no one was in sight before he came out of theswamp, but now, to be doubly certain, he watched the empty road--firstup, then down--for a long half minute, and fetched a sighing breath ofsatisfaction. His eyes fell upon his feet, and, taken with an idea, hestepped back to the edge of the road and with a wisp of crabgrass wipedhis shoes clean of the swamp mud, which was of a different color andtexture from the soil of the upland. All his life Squire H. B. Gathershad been a careful, canny man, and he had need to be doubly careful onthis summer morning. Having disposed of the mud on his feet, he settledhis white straw hat down firmly upon his head, and, crossing the road, he climbed a stake-and-rider fence laboriously and went ploddingsedately across a weedfield and up a slight slope toward his house, halfa mile away, upon the crest of the little hill. 

He felt perfectly natural--not like a man who had just taken afellowman's life--but natural and safe, and well satisfied with himselfand with his morning's work. And he was safe; that was the mainthing--absolutely safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done the thingfor which he had been planning and waiting and longing all these months. There had been no slip or mischance; the whole thing had worked out asplainly and simply as two and two make four. No living creature excepthimself knew of the meeting in the early morning at the head of LittleNiggerwool, exactly where the squire had figured they should meet; noneknew of the device by which the other man had been lured deeper anddeeper in the swamp to the exact spot where the gun was hidden. No onehad seen the two of them enter the swamp; no one had seen the squireemerge, three hours later, alone. 

The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden again, in a place nomortal eye would ever discover. Face downward, with a hole between hisshoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscoveredfor months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried inthe mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. Hewould never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihoodthat inquiry would ever be made for him--let alone a search. He was astranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goingsmade no great stir in the neighborhood, and whose failure to come againwould be taken as a matter of course--just one of those shiftless, wandering Dagoes, here today and gone tomorrow. That was one of the bestthings about it--these Dagoes never had any people in this country toworry about them or look for them when they disappeared. And so it wasall over and done with, and nobody the wiser. The squire clapped hishands together briskly with the air of a man dismissing a subject fromhis mind for good, and mended his gait. 

He felt no stabbings of conscience. On the contrary, a glow ofgratification filled him. His house was saved from scandal; his presentwife would philander no more--before his very eyes--with these youngDagoes, who came from nobody knew where, with packs on their backs andpersuasive, wheedling tongues in their heads. At this thought the squireraised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him--thesmall white cottage among the honey locusts, with beehives and flowerbeds about it; the tidy whitewashed fence; the sound outbuildings at theback, and the well-tilled acres roundabout. 

At the fence he halted and turned about, carelessly and casually, andlooked back along the way he had come. Everything was as it shouldbe--the weedfield steaming in the heat; the empty road stretching alongthe crooked ridge like a long gray snake sunning itself; and beyond it, massing up, the dark, cloaking stretch of swamp. Everything was allright, but----The squire's eyes, in their loose sacs of skin, narrowedand squinted. Out of the blue arch away over yonder a small black dothad resolved itself and was swinging to and fro, like a mote. Abuzzard--hey? Well, there were always buzzards about on a clear day likethis. Buzzards were nothing to worry about--almost any time you couldsee one buzzard, or a dozen buzzards if you were a mind to look forthem. 

But this particular buzzard now--wasn't he making for Little Niggerwool?The squire did not like the idea of that. He had not thought of thebuzzards until this minute. Sometimes when cattle strayed the owners hadbeen known to follow the buzzards, knowing mighty well that if thebuzzards led the way to where the stray was, the stray would be past thesmall salvage of hide and hoofs--but the owner's doubts would be set atrest for good and all. 

There was a grain of disquiet in this. The squire shook his head todrive the thought away--yet it persisted, coming back like a midgedancing before his face. Once at home, however, Squire Gathers deportedhimself in a perfectly normal manner. With the satisfied proprietorialeye of an elderly husband who has no rivals, he considered his youngwife, busied about her household duties. He sat in an easy-chair uponhis front gallery and read his yesterday's Courier-Journal which therural carrier had brought him; but he kept stepping out into the yardto peer up into the sky and all about him. To the second Mrs. Gathers heexplained that he was looking for weather signs. A day as hot and stillas this one was a regular weather breeder; there ought to be rain beforenight. 

"Maybe so, " she said; "but looking's not going to bring rain. "

Nevertheless the squire continued to look. There was really nothing toworry about; still at midday he did not eat much dinner, and before hiswife was half through with hers he was back on the gallery. His paperwas cast aside and he was watching. The original buzzard--or, anyhow, hejudged it was the first one he had seen--was swinging back and forth ingreat pendulum swings, but closer down toward the swamp--closer andcloser--until it looked from that distance as though the buzzard flewalmost at the level of the tallest snags there. And on beyond this firstbuzzard, coursing above him, were other buzzards. Were there four ofthem? No; there were five--five in all. 

Such is the way of the buzzard--that shifting black question mark whichpunctuates a Southern sky. In the woods a shoat or a sheep or a horselies down to die. At once, coming seemingly out of nowhere, appears ablack spot, up five hundred feet or a thousand in the air. In broadloops and swirls this dot swings round and round and round, coming alittle closer to earth at every turn and always with one particular spotupon the earth for the axis of its wheel. Out of space also other movingspots emerge and grow larger as they tack and jib and drop nearer, coming in their leisurely buzzard way to the feast. There is nohaste--the feast will wait. If it is a dumb creature that has fallenstricken the grim coursers will sooner or later be assembled about itand alongside it, scrouging ever closer and closer to the dying thing, with awkward out-thrustings of their naked necks and great dust-raisingflaps of the huge, unkempt wings; lifting their feathered shanks highand stiffly like old crippled grave-diggers in overalls that are tootight--but silent and patient all, offering no attack until the lasttremor runs through the stiffening carcass and the eyes glaze over. Tohumans the buzzard pays a deeper meed of respect--he hangs aloft longer;but in the end he comes. No scavenger shark, no carrion crab, everchambered more grisly secrets in his digestive processes than this bigcharnel bird. Such is the way of the buzzard. 

 * * * * *

The squire missed his afternoon nap, a thing that had not happened inyears. He stayed on the front gallery and kept count. Those movingdistant black specks typified uneasiness for the squire--not fearexactly, or panic or anything akin to it, but a nibbling, nagging kindof uneasiness. Time and again he said to himself that he would not thinkabout them any more; but he did--unceasingly. 

By supper time there were seven of them. 

 * * * * *

He slept light and slept badly. It was not the thought of that dead manlying yonder in Little Niggerwool that made him toss and fume while hiswife snored gently alongside him. It was something else altogether. Finally his stirrings roused her and she asked him drowsily what ailedhim. Was he sick? Or bothered about anything?

Irritated, he answered her snappishly. Certainly nothing was botheringhim, he told her. It was a hot enough night--wasn't it? And when a mangot a little along in life he was apt to be a light sleeper--wasn't thatso? Well, then? She turned upon her side and slept again with her light, purring snore. The squire lay awake, thinking hard and waiting for dayto come. 

At the first faint pink-and-gray glow he was up and out upon thegallery. He cut a comic figure standing there in his shirt in the halflight, with the dewlap at his throat dangling grotesquely in the neckopening of the unbuttoned garment, and his bare bowed legs showing, splotched and varicose. He kept his eyes fixed on the skyline below, tothe south. Buzzards are early risers too. Presently, as the heavensshimmered with the miracle of sunrise, he could make them out--six orseven, or maybe eight. 

An hour after breakfast the squire was on his way down through theweedfield to the county road. He went half eagerly, half unwillingly. Hewanted to make sure about those buzzards. It might be that they wereaiming for the old pasture at the head of the swamp. There were sheepgrazing there--and it might be that a sheep had died. Buzzards werenotoriously fond of sheep, when dead. Or, if they were pointed for theswamp, he must satisfy himself exactly what part of the swamp it was. Hewas at the stake-and-rider fence when a mare came jogging down the road, drawing a rig with a man in it. At sight of the squire in the field theman pulled up. 

"Hi, squire!" he saluted. "Goin' somewheres?"

"No; jest knockin' about, " the squire said--"jest sorter lookin' theplace over. "

"Hot agin--ain't it?" said the other. 

The squire allowed that it was, for a fact, mighty hot. Commonplaces ofgossip followed this--county politics and a neighbor's wife sick ofbreakbone fever down the road a piece. The subject of crops succeededinevitably. The squire spoke of the need of rain. Instantly he regrettedit, for the other man, who was by way of being a weather wiseacre, cocked his head aloft to study the sky for any signs of clouds. 

"Wonder whut all them buzzards are doin' yonder, squire, " he said, pointing upward with his whipstock. 

"Whut buzzards--where?" asked the squire with an elaborate note ofcarelessness in his voice. 

"Right yonder, over Little Niggerwool--see 'em there?"

"Oh, yes, " the squire made answer. "Now I see 'em. They ain't doin'nothin', I reckin--jest flyin' round same as they always do in clearweather. "

"Must be somethin' dead over there!" speculated the man in the buggy. 

"A hawg probably, " said the squire promptly--almost too promptly. "There's likely to be hawgs usin' in Niggerwool. Bristow, over on theother side from here--he's got a big drove of hawgs. "

"Well, mebbe so, " said the man; "but hawgs is a heap more apt to befeedin' on high ground, seems like to me. Well, I'll be gittin' alongtowards town. G'day, squire. " And he slapped the lines down on themare's flank and jogged off through the dust. 

He could not have suspected anything--that man couldn't. As the squireturned away from the road and headed for his house he congratulatedhimself upon that stroke of his in bringing in Bristow's hogs; and yetthere remained this disquieting note in the situation, that buzzardsflying, and especially buzzards flying over Little Niggerwool, madepeople curious--made them ask questions. 

He was half-way across the weedfield when, above the hum of insect life, above the inward clamor of his own busy speculations, there came to hisear dimly and distantly a sound that made him halt and cant his head toone side the better to hear it. Somewhere, a good way off, there was athin, thready, broken strain of metallic clinking and clanking--an eeryghost-chime ringing. It came nearer and became plainer--tonk-tonk-tonk;then the tonks all running together briskly. 

A sheep bell or a cowbell--that was it; but why did it seem to come fromoverhead, from up in the sky, like? And why did it shift so abruptlyfrom one quarter to another--from left to right and back again to left?And how was it that the clapper seemed to strike so fast? Not even thebreachiest of breachy young heifers could be expected to tinkle acowbell with such briskness. The squire's eye searched the earth and thesky, his troubled mind giving to his eye a quick and flashing scrutiny. He had it. It was not a cow at all. It was not anything that went onfour legs. 

One of the loathly flock had left the others. The orbit of his swing hadcarried him across the road and over Squire Gathers' land. He wassailing right toward and over the squire now. Craning his flabby neck, the squire could make out the unwholesome contour of the huge bird. Hecould see the ragged black wings--a buzzard's wings are so often raggedand uneven--and the naked throat; the slim, naked head; the big feetfolded up against the dingy belly. And he could see a bell too--anundersized cowbell--that dangled at the creature's breast and jangledincessantly. All his life nearly Squire Gathers had been hearing aboutthe Belled Buzzard. Now with his own eye he was seeing him. 

Once, years and years and years ago, some one trapped a buzzard, andbefore freeing it clamped about its skinny neck a copper band with acowbell pendent from it. Since then the bird so ornamented has been seena hundred times--and heard oftener--over an area as wide as half thecontinent. It has been reported, now in Kentucky, now in Texas, now inNorth Carolina--now anywhere between the Ohio River and the Gulf. Crossroads correspondents take their pens in hand to write to thecountry papers that on such and such a date, at such a place, So-and-Sosaw the Belled Buzzard. Always it is the Belled Buzzard, never a belledbuzzard. The Belled Buzzard is an institution. 

There must be more than one of them. It seems hard to believe that onebird, even a buzzard in his prime, and protected by law in everySouthern state and known to be a bird of great age, could live so longand range so far and wear a clinking cowbell all the time! Probablyother jokers have emulated the original joker; probably if the truthwere known there have been a dozen such; but the country people willhave it that there is only one Belled Buzzard--a bird that bears acharmed life and on his neck a never silent bell. 

 * * * * *

Squire Gathers regarded it a most untoward thing that the Belled Buzzardshould have come just at this time. The movements of ordinary, unmarkedbuzzards mainly concerned only those whose stock had strayed; but almostanybody with time to spare might follow this rare and famous visitor, this belled and feathered junkman of the sky. Supposing now that someone followed it today--maybe followed it even to a certain thick clumpof cypress in the middle of Little Niggerwool!

But at this particular moment the Belled Buzzard was heading directlyaway from that quarter. Could it be following him? Of course not! It wasjust by chance that it flew along the course the squire was taking. But, to make sure, he veered off sharply, away from the footpath into thehigh weeds so that the startled grasshoppers sprayed up in front of himin fan-like flights. 

He was right; it was only a chance. The Belled Buzzard swung off too, but in the opposite direction, with a sharp tonking of its bell, and, flapping hard, was in a minute or two out of hearing and sight, pastthe trees to the westward. 

Again the squire skimped his dinner, and again he spent the long drowsyafternoon upon his front gallery. In all the sky there were now nobuzzards visible, belled or unbelled--they had settled to earthsomewhere; and this served somewhat to soothe the squire's pesteredmind. This does not mean, though, that he was by any means easy in histhoughts. Outwardly he was calm enough, with the ruminative judicial airbefitting the oldest justice of the peace in the county; but, withinhim, a little something gnawed unceasingly at his nerves like one ofthose small white worms that are to be found in seemingly sound nuts. About once in so long a tiny spasm of the muscles would contract thedewlap under his chin. The squire had never heard of that play, madefamous by a famous player, wherein the murdered victim was a pedlertoo, and a clamoring bell the voice of unappeasable remorse in themurderer's ear. As a strict churchgoer the squire had no use for playersor for play actors, and so was spared that added canker to hisconscience. It was bad enough as it was. 

That night, as on the night before, the old man's sleep was broken andfitful and disturbed by dreaming, in which he heard a metal clapperstriking against a brazen surface. This was one dream that came true. Just after daybreak he heaved himself out of bed, with a flop of hisbroad bare feet upon the floor, and stepped to the window and peeredout. Half seen in the pinkish light, the Belled Buzzard flapped directlyover his roof and flew due south, right toward the swamp--drawing adirect line through the air between the slayer and the victim--or, anyway, so it seemed to the watcher, grown suddenly tremulous. 

 * * * * *

Knee deep in yellow swamp water the squire squatted, with his shotguncocked and loaded and ready, waiting to kill the bird that now typifiedfor him guilt and danger and an abiding great fear. Gnats plagued himand about him frogs croaked. Almost overhead a log-cock clung lengthwiseto a snag, watching him. Snake doctors, limber, long insects with bronzebodies and filmy wings, went back and forth like small living shuttles. Other buzzards passed and repassed, but the squire waited, forgettingthe cramps in his elderly limbs and the discomfort of the water in hisshoes. 

At length he heard the bell. It came nearer and nearer, and the BelledBuzzard swung overhead not sixty feet up, its black bulk a fair targetagainst the blue. He aimed and fired, both barrels bellowing at once anda fog of thick powder smoke enveloping him. Through the smoke he saw thebird careen and its bell jangled furiously; then the buzzard righteditself and was gone, fleeing so fast that the sound of its bell washushed almost instantly. Two long wing feathers drifted slowly down;torn disks of gunwadding and shredded green scraps of leaves descendedabout the squire in a little shower. 

He cast his empty gun from him so that it fell in the water anddisappeared; and he hurried out of the swamp as fast as his shaky legswould take him, splashing himself with mire and water to his eyebrows. Mucked with mud, breathing in great gulps, trembling, a suspiciousfigure to any eye, he burst through the weed curtain and staggered intothe open, his caution all gone and a vast desperation fairly chokinghim--but the gray road was empty and the field beyond the road wasempty; and, except for him, the whole world seemed empty and silent. 

As he crossed the field Squire Gathers composed himself. With pluckedhandfuls of grass he cleansed himself of much of the swamp mire thatcoated him over; but the little white worm that gnawed at his nerves hadbecome a cold snake that was coiled about his heart, squeezing ittighter and tighter!

 * * * * *

[Illustration: "TWO LONG WING FEATHERS DRIFTED SLOWLY DOWN. "--_Page 70. _]

This episode of the attempt to kill the Belled Buzzard occurred in theafternoon of the third day. In the forenoon of the fourth, the weatherbeing still hot, with cloudless skies and no air stirring, there was arattle of warped wheels in the squire's lane and a hail at his yardfence. Coming out upon his gallery from the innermost darkened room of hishouse, where he had been stretched upon a bed, the squire shaded hiseyes from the glare and saw the constable of his own magisterialdistrict sitting in a buggy at the gate waiting. 

The old man went down the dirtpath slowly, almost reluctantly, with hishead twisted up side wise, listening, watching; but the constable sensednothing strange about the other's gait and posture; the constable wasfull of the news he brought. He began to unload the burden of it withoutpreamble. 

"Mornin', Squire Gathers. There's been a dead man found in LittleNiggerwool--and you're wanted. "

He did not notice that the squire was holding on with both hands to thegate; but he did notice that the squire had a sick look out of his eyesand a dead, pasty color in his face; and he noticed--but attached nomeaning to it--that when the squire spoke his voice seemed flat andhollow. 

"Wanted--fur--whut?" The squire forced the words out of his throat, pumped them out fairly. 

"Why, to hold the inquest, " explained the constable. "The coroner's sickabed, and he said you bein' the nearest jestice of the peace you shouldserve. "

"Oh, " said the squire with more ease. "Well, where is it--the body?"

"They taken it to Bristow's place and put it in his stable for thepresent. They brought it out over on that side and his place was thenearest. If you'll hop in here with me, squire, I'll ride you right overthere now. There's enough men already gathered to make up a jury, Ireckin. "

"I--I ain't well, " demurred the squire. "I've been sleepin' porely theselast few nights. It's the heat, " he added quickly. 

"Well, suh, you don't look very brash, and that's a fact, " said theconstable; "but this here job ain't goin' to keep you long. You see it'sin such shape--the body is--that there ain't no way of makin' out whothe feller was nor whut killed him. There ain't nobody reported missin'in this county as we know of, either; so I jedge a verdict of a unknownperson dead from unknown causes would be about the correct thing. And wekin git it all over mighty quick and put him underground right away, suh--if you'll go along now. "

"I'll go, " agreed the squire, almost quivering in his newborn eagerness. "I'll go right now. " He did not wait to get his coat or to notify hiswife of the errand that was taking him. In his shirtsleeves he climbedinto the buggy, and the constable turned his horse and clucked him intoa trot. And now the squire asked the question that knocked at his lipsdemanding to be asked--the question the answer to which he yearned forand yet dreaded. 

"How did they come to find--it?"

"Well, suh, that's a funny thing, " said the constable. "Early thismornin' Bristow's oldest boy--that one they call Buddy--he heared acowbell over in the swamp and so he went to look; Bristow's got cows, asyou know, and one or two of 'em is belled. And he kept on followin'after the sound of it till he got way down into the thickest part ofthem cypress slashes that's near the middle there; and right there herun acrost it--this body. 

"But, suh, squire, it wasn't no cow at all. No, suh; it was a buzzardwith a cowbell on his neck--that's whut it was. Yes, suh; that theresame old Belled Buzzard he's come back agin and is hangin' round. Theytell me he ain't been seen round here since the year of the yellowfever--I don't remember myself, but that's whut they tell me. Theniggers over on the other side are right smartly worked up over it. Theysay--the niggers do--that when the Belled Buzzard comes it's a sign ofbad luck for somebody, shore!"

The constable drove on, talking on, garrulous as a guinea hen. Thesquire didn't heed him. Hunched back in the buggy, he harkened only tothose busy inner voices filling his mind with thundering portents. Evenso, his ear was first to catch above the rattle of the buggy wheels thefar-away, faint tonk-tonk! They were about half-way to Bristow's placethen. He gave no sign, and it was perhaps half a minute before hiscompanion heard it too. 

The constable jerked the horse to a standstill and craned his neck overhis shoulder. 

"Well, by doctors!" he cried, "if there ain't the old scoundrel now, right here behind us! I kin see him plain as day--he's got an oldcowbell hitched to his neck; and he's shy a couple of feathers out ofone wing. By doctors, that's somethin' you won't see every day! In allmy born days I ain't never seen the beat of that!"

Squire Gathers did not look; he only cowered back farther under thebuggy top. In the pleasing excitement of the moment his companion tookno heed, though, of anything except the Belled Buzzard. 

"Is he followin' us?" asked the squire in a curiously flat, weightedvoice. 

"Which--him?" answered the constable, still stretching his neck. "No, he's gone now--gone off to the left--jest a-zoomin', like he'd doneforgot somethin'. "

And Bristow's place was to the left! But there might still be time. Toget the inquest over and the body underground--those were the mainthings. Ordinarily humane in his treatment of stock, Squire Gathersurged the constable to greater speed. The horse was lathered and hissides heaved wearily as they pounded across the bridge over the creekwhich was the outlet to the swamp and emerged from a patch of woods insight of Bristow's farm buildings. 

The house was set on a little hill among cleared fields and was in otherrespects much like the squire's own house except that it was smaller andnot so well painted. There was a wide yard in front with shade trees anda lye hopper and a well-box, and a paling fence with a stile in itinstead of a gate. At the rear, behind a clutter of outbuildings--abarn, a smokehouse and a corncrib--was a little peach orchard, andflanking the house on the right there was a good-sized cowyard, empty ofstock at this hour, with feedracks ranged in a row against the fence. Atwo-year-old negro child, bareheaded and barefooted and wearing but asingle garment, was grubbing busily in the dirt under one of thesefeedracks. 

To the front fence a dozen or more riding horses were hitched, flickingtheir tails at the flies; and on the gallery men in their shirtsleeveswere grouped. An old negro woman, with her head tied in a bandanna and aman's old slouch hat perched upon the bandanna, peeped out from behind acorner. There were gaunt hound dogs wandering about, sniffing uneasily. 

Before the constable had the horse hitched the squire was out of thebuggy and on his way up the footpath, going at a brisker step than thesquire usually traveled. The men on the porch hailed him gravely andceremoniously, as befitting an occasion of solemnity. Afterward some ofthem recalled the look in his eye; but at the moment they noted it--ifthey noted it at all--subconsciously. 

For all his haste the squire, as was also remembered later, was almostthe last to enter the door; and before he did enter he halted andsearched the flawless sky as though for signs of rain. Then he hurriedon after the others, who clumped single file along a narrow little hall, the bare, uncarpeted floor creaking loudly under their heavy farm shoes, and entered a good-sized room that had in it, among other things, ahigh-piled feather bed and a cottage organ--Bristow's best room, now tobe placed at the disposal of the law's representatives for the inquest. The squire took the largest chair and drew it to the very center of theroom, in front of a fireplace, where the grate was banked with witheringasparagus ferns. The constable took his place formally at one side ofthe presiding official. The others sat or stood about where they couldfind room--all but six of them, whom the squire picked for his coroner'sjury, and who backed themselves against the wall. 

The squire showed haste. He drove the preliminaries forward with a sortof tremulous insistence. Bristow's wife brought a bucket of freshdrinking water and a gourd, and almost before she was out of the roomand the door closed behind her the squire had sworn his jurors and wascalling the first witness, who it seemed likely would also be the onlywitness--Bristow's oldest boy. The boy wriggled in confusion as he saton a cane-bottomed chair facing the old magistrate. All there, barringone or two, had heard his story a dozen times already, but now it was tobe repeated under oath; and so they bent their heads, listening asthough it were a brand-new tale. All eyes were on him; none werefastened on the squire as he, too, gravely bent his head, listening--listening. 

The witness began--but had no more than started when the squire gave agreat, screeching howl and sprang from his chair and staggered backward, his eyes popped and the pouch under his chin quivering as though it hada separate life all its own. Startled, the constable made toward him andthey struck together heavily and went down--both on their allfours--right in front of the fireplace. 

The constable scrambled free and got upon his feet, in a squat ofastonishment, with his head craned; but the squire stayed upon thefloor, face downward, his feet flopping among the rustling asparagusgreens--a picture of slavering animal fear. And now his gagging screechresolved itself into articulate speech. 

"I done it!" they made out his shrieked words. "I done it! I own up--Ikilled him! He aimed fur to break up my home and I tolled him off intoNiggerwool and killed him! There's a hole in his back if you'll lookfur it. I done it--oh, I done it--and I'll tell everything jest like ithappened if you'll jest keep that thing away from me! Oh, my Lawdy!Don't you hear it? It's a-comin' clos'ter and clos'ter--it's a-comin'after me! Keep it away----" His voice gave out and he buried his head inhis hands and rolled upon the gaudy carpet. 

And now they all heard what he had heard first--they heard thetonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them alongthe hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There wasno creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards--and the bell jangledfaster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right tothe door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the chair legs. 

The door swung open. In the doorway stood a negro child, barefooted andnaked except for a single garment, eyeing them with serious, rollingeyes--and, with all the strength of his two puny arms, proudly butsolemnly tolling a small rusty cowbell he had found in the cowyard. 

III

AN OCCURRENCE UP A SIDE STREET

"See if he's still there, will you?" said the man listlessly, as ifknowing in advance what the answer would be. 

The woman, who, like the man, was in her stocking feet, crossed theroom, closing the door with all softness behind her. She felt her waysilently through the darkness of a small hallway, putting first her earand then her eye to a tiny cranny in some thick curtains at a frontwindow. 

She looked downward and outward upon one of those New York side streetsthat is precisely like forty other New York side streets: two unbrokenlines of high-shouldered, narrow-chested brick-and-stone houses, risingin abrupt, straight cliffs; at the bottom of the canyon a narrow riverof roadway with manholes and conduit covers dotting its channelintermittently like scattered stepping stones; and on either side wide, flat pavements, as though the stream had fallen to low-water mark andleft bare its shallow banks. Daylight would have shown most of thehouses boarded up, with diamond-shaped vents, like leering eyes, cut inthe painted planking of the windows and doors; but now it was nighttime--eleven o'clock of a wet, hot, humid night of the late summer--andthe street was buttoned down its length in the double-breasted fashionof a bandmaster's coat with twin rows of gas lamps evenly spaced. Undereach small circle of lighted space the dripping, black asphalt had aslimy, slick look like the sides of a newly caught catfish. Elsewherethe whole vista lay all in close shadow, black as a cave mouth underevery stoop front and blacker still in the hooded basement areas. Only, half a mile to the eastward a dim, distant flicker showed where Broadwayran, a broad, yellow streak down the spine of the city, and high abovethe broken skyline of eaves and cornices there rolled in cloudy wavesthe sullen red radiance, born of a million electrics and the flares fromgas tanks and chimneys, which is only to be seen on such nights as this, giving to the heaven above New York that same color tone you find in anartist's conception of Babylon falling or Rome burning. 

From where the woman stood at the window she could make out the round, white, mushroom top of a policeman's summer helmet as its wearer leanedback, half sheltered under the narrow portico of the stoop just belowher; and she could see his uniform sleeve and his hand, covered with awhite cotton glove, come up, carrying a handkerchief, and mop the hiddenface under the helmet's brim. The squeak of his heavy shoes was plainlyaudible to her also. While she stayed there, watching and listening, twopedestrians--and only two--passed on her side of the street: a messengerboy in a glistening rubber poncho going west and a man under an umbrellagoing east. Each was hurrying along until he came just opposite her, andthen, as though controlled by the same set of strings, each stoppedshort and looked up curiously at the blind, dark house and at the figurelounging in the doorway, then hurried on without a word, leaving thesilent policeman fretfully mopping his moist face and tugging at thewilted collar about his neck. 

After a minute or two at her peephole behind the window curtains above, the woman passed back through the door to the inner, middle room wherethe man sat. 

"Still there, " she said lifelessly in the half whisper that she had cometo use almost altogether these last few days; "still there and sure tostay there until another one just like him comes to take his place. Whatelse did you expect?"

The man only nodded absently and went on peeling an overripe peach, striking out constantly, with the hand that held the knife, at theflies. They were green flies--huge, shiny-backed, buzzing, persistentvermin. There were a thousand of them; there seemed to be a million ofthem. They filled the shut-in room with their vile humming; they swarmedeverywhere in the half light. They were thickest, though, in a corner atthe back, where there was a closed, white door. Here a great knot ofthem, like an iridescent, shimmering jewel, was clustered about thekeyhole. They scrolled the white enameled panels with intricate, shifting patterns, and in pairs and singly they promenaded busily on thewhite porcelain knob, giving it the appearance of being alive and havinga motion of its own. 

It was stiflingly hot and sticky in the room. The sweat rolled down theman's face as he peeled his peach and pared some half-rotted spots outof it. He protected it with a cupped palm as he bit into it. One hugegreen fly flipped nimbly under the fending hand and lit on the peach. With a savage little snarl of disgust and loathing the man shook theclinging insect off and with the knife carved away the place where itsfeet had touched the soft fruit. Then he went on munching, meanwhilefurtively watching the woman. She was on the opposite side of a smallcenter-table from him, with her face in her hands, shaking her head witha little shuddering motion whenever one of the flies settled on herclose-cropped hair or brushed her bare neck. 

He was a smallish man, with a suggestion of something dapper about himeven in his present unkempt disorder; he might have been handsome, in aweakly effeminate way, had not Nature or some mishap given his face atwist that skewed it all to one side, drawing all of his features out offocus, like a reflection viewed in a flawed mirror. He was no heavierthan the woman and hardly as tall. She, however, looked less than herreal height, seeing that she was dressed, like a half-grown boy, in asoft-collared shirt open at the throat and a pair of loose trousers. Shehad large but rather regular features, pouting lips, a clear brown skinand full, prominent brown eyes; and one of them had a pronounced cast init--an imperfection already made familiar by picture and printeddescription to sundry millions of newspaper readers. For this was EllaGilmorris, the woman in the case of the Gilmorris murder, about whichthe continent of North America was now reading and talking. And thelittle man with the twisted face, who sat across from her, gnawing apeach stone clean, was the notorious "Doctor" Harris Devine, aliasVanderburg, her accomplice, and worth more now to society in his presentuntidy state than ever before at any one moment of his wholediscreditable life, since for his capture the people of the state of NewYork stood willing to pay the sum of one thousand dollars, which tidyreward one of the afternoon papers had increased by another thousand. 

Everywhere detectives--amateurs and the kind who work for hire--wereseeking the pair who at this precise moment faced each other across alittle center-table in the last place any searcher would have suspectedor expected them to be--on the second floor of the house in which thelate Cassius Gilmorris had been killed. This, then, was the situation:inside, these two fugitives, watchful, silent, their eyes red-rimmed forlack of sleep, their nerves raw and tingling as though rasped withfiles, each busy with certain private plans, each fighting offconstantly the touch of the nasty scavenger flies that flickered andflitted iridescently about them; outside, in the steamy, hot drizzle, with his back to the locked and double-locked door, a leg-wearypoliceman, believing that he guarded a house all empty except for suchevidences as yet remained of the Gilmorris murder. 

 * * * * *

It was one of those small, chancy things that so often disarrange thebest laid plots of murderers that had dished their hope of a cleangetaway and brought them back, at the last, to the starting point. Ifthe plumber's helper, who was sent to cure a bathtub of leaking in thehouse next door, had not made a mistake and come to the wrong number;and if they, in the haste of flight, had not left an area doorunfastened; and if this young plumbing apprentice, stumbling his wayupstairs on the hunt for the misbehaving drain, had not opened the whiteenameled door and found inside there what he did find--if this smallsequence of incidents had not occurred as it did and when it did, or ifonly it had been delayed another twenty-four hours, or even twelve, everything might have turned out differently. But fate, to call it byits fancy name--coincidence, to use its garden one--interfered, as itusually does in cases such as this. And so here they were. 

The man had been on his way to the steamship office to get the ticketswhen an eruption of newsboys boiled out of Mail Street into Broadway, with extras on their arms, all shouting out certain words that sent himscurrying back in a panic to the small, obscure family hotel in thelower thirties where the woman waited. From that moment it was she, really, who took the initiative in all the efforts to break through thedoubled and tripled lines that the police machinery looped about thefive boroughs of the city. 

At dark that evening "Mr. And Mrs. A. Thompson, of Jersey City, " a quietcouple who went closely muffled up, considering that it was August, andcarrying heavy valises, took quarters at a dingy furnished room house ona miscalled avenue of Brooklyn not far from the Wall Street ferries andoverlooking the East River waterfront from its bleary back windows. Twohours later a very different-looking pair issued quietly from a sideentrance of this place and vanished swiftly down toward the docks. Thething was well devised and carried out well too; yet by morning thedetectives, already ranging and quartering the town as bird-dogs quartera brier-field, had caught up again and pieced together the broken endsof the trail; and, thanks to them and the newspapers, a good manythousand wide awake persons were on the lookout for a plump, brown-skinned young woman with a cast in her right eye, wearing a boy'sdisguise and accompanied by a slender little man carrying his headslightly to one side, who when last seen wore smoked glasses and had hisface extensively bandaged, as though suffering from a toothache. 

Then had followed days and nights of blind twisting and dodging andhiding, with the hunt growing warmer behind them all the time. Throughthis they were guided and at times aided by things printed in the verypapers that worked the hardest to run them down. Once they ventured asfar as the outer entrance of the great, new uptown terminal, and turnedaway, too far gone and sick with fear to dare run the gauntlet of thewaiting room and the train-shed. Once--because they saw a made-upCentral Office man in every lounging long-shoreman, and were not so farwrong either--they halted at the street end of one of the smaller piersand from there watched a grimy little foreign boat that carried nowireless masts and that might have taken them to any one of half a dozenobscure banana ports of South America--watched her while she hiccoughedout into midstream and straightened down the river for the openbay--watched her out of sight and then fled again to their newest hidingplace in the lower East Side in a cold sweat, with the feeling thatevery casual eye glance from every chance passer-by carried suspicionand recognition in its flash, that every briskening footstep on thepavement behind them meant pursuit. 

Once in that tormented journey there was a sudden jingle of metal, likerattling handcuffs, in the man's ear and a heavy hand fell detaininglyon his shoulder--and he squeaked like a caught shore-bird and shrunkaway from under the rough grips of a truckman who had yanked him clearof a lurching truck horse tangled in its own traces. Then, finally, hadcome a growing distrust for their latest landlord, a stolid Russian Jewwho read no papers and knew no English, and saw in his pale pair ofguests only an American lady and gentleman who kept much to their roomand paid well in advance for everything; and after that, in the hotrainy night, the flight afoot across weary miles of soaking crossstreets and up through ill-lighted, shabby avenues to the one place ofrefuge left open to them. They had learned from the newspapers, at oncea guide and a bane, a friend and a dogging enemy, that the place waslocked up, now that the police had got through searching it, and thatthe coroner's people held the keys. And the woman knew of a faulty catchon a rear cellar window, and so, in a fit of stark desperation borderingon lunacy, back they ran, like a pair of spent foxes circling to aburrow from which they have been smoked out. 

Again it was the woman who picked for her companion the easiest paththrough the inky-black alley, and with her own hands she pulled downnoiselessly the broken slats of the rotting wooden wall at the back ofthe house. And then, soon, they were inside, with the reeking heat ofthe boxed-up house and the knowledge that at any moment discovery mightcome bursting in upon them--inside with their busy thoughts and the busygreen flies. How persistent the things were--shake them off a hundredtimes and back they came buzzing! And where had they all come from?There had been none of them about before, surely, and now theirmaddening, everlasting droning filled the ear. And what nasty creaturesthey were, forever cleaning their shiny wings and rubbing the ends oftheir forelegs together with the loathsome suggestion of littlegrave-diggers anointing their palms. To the woman, at least, these fliesalmost made bearable the realization that, at best, this stopping pointcould be only a temporary one, and that within a few hours a fresh startmust somehow be made, with fresh dangers to face at every turning. 

 * * * * *

It was during this last hideous day of flight and terror that the thingwhich had been growing in the back part of the brain of each of thembegan to assume shape and a definite aspect. The man had the craftiermind, but the woman had a woman's intuition, and she already had readhis thoughts while yet he had no clue to hers. For the primal instinctof self-preservation, blazing up high, had burned away the bond of boguslove that held them together while they were putting her drunkard of ahusband out of the way, and now there only remained to tie them fastthis partnership of a common guilt. 

In these last few hours they had both come to know that together therewas no chance of ultimate escape; traveling together the very disparityof their compared appearances marked them with a fatal and unmistakableconspicuousness, as though they were daubed with red paint from the samepaint brush; staying together meant ruin--certain, sure. Now, then, separated and going singly, there might be a thin strand of hope. Yetthe man felt that, parted a single hour from the woman, and she stillalive, his wofully small prospect would diminish and shrink to thevanishing point--New York juries being most notoriously easy upon womenmurderers who give themselves up and turn state's evidence; and, by thesame mistaken processes of judgment, notoriously hard upon their maleaccomplices--half a dozen such instances had been playing in flashesacross his memory already. 

Neither had so much as hinted at separating. The man didn't speak, because of a certain idea that had worked itself all out hours beforewithin his side-flattened skull. The woman likewise had refrained fromputting in words the suggestion that had been uppermost in her brainfrom the time they broke into the locked house. Some darting look ofquick, malignant suspicion from him, some inner warning sense, held hermute at first; and later, as the newborn hate and dread of him grew andmastered her and she began to canvass ways and means to a certain end, she stayed mute still. 

Whatever was to be done must be done quietly, without a struggle--theleast sound might arouse the policeman at the door below. One thing wasin her favor--she knew he was not armed; he had the contempt and thefear of a tried and proved poisoner for cruder lethal tools. 

It was characteristic also of the difference between these two thatDevine should have had his plan stage-set and put to motion long beforethe woman dreamed of acting. It was all within his orderly scheme of thething proposed that he, a shrinking coward, should have set his squirrelteeth hard and risked detection twice in that night: once to buy abasket of overripe fruit from a dripping Italian at a sidewalk stand, taking care to get some peaches--he just must have a peach, he hadexplained to her; and once again when he entered a dark little store onSecond Avenue, where liquors were sold in their original packages, andbought from a sleepy, stupid clerk two bottles of a cheap domesticchampagne--"to give us the strength for making a fresh start, " he toldher glibly, as an excuse for taking this second risk. So, then, with thethird essential already resting at the bottom of an inner waistcoatpocket, he was prepared; and he had been waiting for his opportunityfrom the moment when they crept in through the basement window and felttheir way along, she resolutely leading, to the windowless, shroudedmiddle room here on the second floor. 

 * * * * *

How she hated him, feared him too! He could munch his peaches and uncorkhis warm, cheap wine in this very room, with that bathroom just yonderand these flies all about. From under her fingers, interlaced over herforehead, her eyes roved past him, searching the littered room for thetwentieth time in the hour, looking, seeking--and suddenly they fell onsomething--a crushed and rumpled hat of her own, a milliner'smasterpiece, laden with florid plumage, lying almost behind him on acouch end where some prying detective had dropped it, with a big, roundblack button shining dully from the midst of its damaged tulle crown. She knew that button well. It was the imitation-jet head of a hatpin--asteel hatpin--that was ten inches long and maybe longer. 

She looked and looked at the round, dull knob, like a mystic held by ahypnotist's crystal ball, and she began to breathe a little faster; shecould feel her resolution tighten within her like a turning screw. 

Beneath her brows, heavy and thick for a woman's, her eyes flitted backto the man. With the careful affectation of doing nothing at all, atheatricalism that she detected instantly, but for which she could guessno reason, he was cutting away at the damp, close-gnawed seed of thepeach, trying apparently to fashion some little trinket--a toy basket, possibly--from it. His fingers moved deftly over its slick, wet surface. He had already poured out some of the champagne. One of the pint bottlesstood empty, with the distorted button-headed cork lying beside it, andin two glasses the yellow wine was fast going flat and dead in thatstifling heat. It still spat up a few little bubbles to the surface, asthough minute creatures were drowning in it down below. The man wassweating more than ever, so that, under the single, low-turned gas jet, his crooked face had a greasy shine to it. A church clock down in thenext block struck twelve slowly. The sleepless flies buzzed evilly. 

"Look out again, won't you?" he said for perhaps the tenth time in twohours. "There's a chance, you know, that he might be gone--just a barechance. And be sure you close the door into the hall behind you, " headded as if by an afterthought. "You left it ajar once--this light mightshow through the window draperies. "

At his bidding she rose more willingly than at any time before. To reachthe door she passed within a foot of the end of the couch, and watchingover her shoulder at his hunched-up back she paused there for thesmallest fraction of time. The damaged picture hat slid off on the floorwith a soft little thud, but he never turned around. 

The instant, though, that the hall door closed behind her the man'shands became briskly active. He fumbled in an inner pocket of hisunbuttoned waistcoat; then his right hand, holding a small cylindricalvial of a colorless liquid, passed swiftly over one of the two glassesof slaking champagne and hovered there a second. A few tiny globulesfell dimpling into the top of the yellow wine, then vanished; a heavyreek, like the smell of crushed peach kernels, spread through the wholeroom. In the same motion almost he recorked the little bottle, stowed itout of sight, and with a quick, wrenching thrust that bent the smallblade of his penknife in its socket he split the peach seed in twolengthwise and with his thumb-nail bruised the small brown kernel lyingsnugly within. He dropped the knife and the halved seed and begansipping at the undoctored glass of champagne, not forgetting even thento wave his fingers above it to keep the winged green tormentors out. 

The door at the front reopened and the woman came in. Her thoughts werenot upon smells, but instinctively she sniffed at the thick scent on thepoisoned air. 

"I accidentally split this peach seed open, " he said quickly, with anelaborate explanatory air. "Stenches up the whole place, don't it? Come, take that other glass of champagne--it will do you good to----"

Perhaps it was some subtle sixth sense that warned him; perhaps thelightning-quick realization that she had moved right alongside him, poised and set to strike. At any rate he started to fling up hishead--too late! The needle point of the jet-headed hatpin enteredexactly at the outer corner of his right eye and passed backward fornearly its full length into his brain--smoothly, painlessly, swiftly. Hegave a little surprised gasp, almost like a sob, and lolled his headback against the chair rest, like a man who has grown suddenly tired. The hand that held the champagne glass relaxed naturally and the glassturned over on its side with a small tinkling sound and spilled its thincontents on the table. 

It had been easier than she had thought it would be. She stepped back, still holding the hatpin. She moved around from behind him, and then shesaw his face, half upturned, almost directly beneath the low light. There was no blood, no sign even of the wound, but his jaw had droppeddown unpleasantly, showing the ends of his lower front teeth, and hiseyes stared up unwinkingly with a puzzled, almost a disappointed, lookin them. A green fly lit at the outer corner of his right eye; moregreen flies were coming. And he didn't put up his hand to brush it away. He let it stay--he let it stay there. 

With her eyes still fixed on his face, the woman reached out, feelingfor her glass of the champagne. She felt that she needed it now, and ata gulp she took a good half of it down her throat. 

She put the glass down steadily enough on the table; but into her eyescame the same puzzled, baffled look that his wore, and almost gently sheslipped down into the chair facing him. 

Then her jaw lolled a little too, and some of the other flies camebuzzing toward her. 

IV

ANOTHER OF THOSE CUB REPORTER STORIES

The first time I saw Major Putnam Stone I didn't see him first. To beexact, I heard him first, and then I walked round the end of aseven-foot partition and saw him. 

I had just gone to work for the Evening Press. As I recall now it was mysecond day, and I hadn't begun to feel at home there yet, and probablywas more sensitive to outside sights and noises than I would ever againbe in that place. Generally speaking, when a reporter settles down tohis knitting, which in his case is his writing, he becomes impervious toall disturbances excepting those that occur inside his own brainpan. Ifhe couldn't, he wouldn't amount to shucks in his trade. Give him a good, live-action story to write for an edition going to press in about nineminutes, and the rattles and slams of half a dozen typewriting machines, and the blattings of a pestered city editor, and the gabble of a coupleof copy boys at his elbow, and all the rest of it won't worry him. Hemay not think he hears it, but he does, only instead of beingdistracting it is stimulating. It's all a part of the mechanism of theshop, helping him along unconsciously to speed and efficiency. I'veoften thought that, when I was handling a good, bloody murder story, say, it would tone up my style to have a phonograph about ten feet awaygrinding out The Last Ravings of John McCullough. Anyway, I am sure itwouldn't do any harm. A brass band playing a John Philip Sousa marchmakes fine accompaniment to write copy to. I've done it before now, covering parades and conventions, and I know. 

But on this particular occasion I was, as I say, new to the job andmaybe a little nervous to boot, and as I sat there, trying to frame asnappy opening paragraph for the interview I had just brought back withme from one of the hotels, I became aware of a voice somewhere in theimmediate vicinity, a voice that didn't jibe in with my thoughts. At themoment I stopped to listen it was saying: "As for me, sir, I have alwayscontended that the ultimate fate of the cause was due in great measureto the death of Albert Sidney Johnston at Shiloh on the evening of thefirst day's fight. Now then, what would have been the final result ifAlbert Sidney Johnston had lived? I ask you, gentlemen, what would havebeen the final result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?"

Across the room from me I heard Devore give a hollow groan. His desk wasbacked right up against the cross partition, and the partition was builtof thin pine boards and was like a sounding board in his ear. Devore wascity editor. 

"Oh, thunder!" he said, half under his breath, "I'll be the goat! Whatwould have been the result if Albert Sidney Johnston had lived?" Helooked at me and gave a wink of serio-comic despair, and then he ran hisblue pencil up through his hair and left a blue streak like a scar onhis scalp. Devore was one of the few city editors I have ever seen whoused that tool which all of them are popularly supposed to handle somurderously--a blue pencil. And as he had a habit, when he was flusteredor annoyed--and that was most of the time--of scratching his head withthe point end of it, his forehead under the hair roots was usuallystreaked with purplish-blue tracings, like a fly-catcher's egg. 

The voice, which had a deep and space-filling quality to it, continuedto come through and over the partition that divided off our cubby-holeof a workroom--called a city room by courtesy--from the space wherecertain other members of the staff had their desks. I got up from myplace and stepped over to where the thin wall ended in a doorway, beingminded to have a look at the speaker. The voice sounded as though itmust belong to a big man with a barrel-organ chest. I was surprised tofind that it didn't. 

Its owner was sitting in a chair in the middle of a little spacecluttered up with discarded exchanges and galley proofs. He was rather asmall man, short but compact. He had his hat off and his hair, which wasthin but fine as silk floss, was combed back over his ears and sprayedout behind in a sort of mane effect. It had been red hair once, but wasnow so thickly streaked with white that it had become a faded brindlecolor. I took notice of this first because his back was toward me; in asecond or two he turned his head sideways and I saw that he had exactlythe face to match the hair. It was a round, plump, elderly face, with ashort nose, delicately pink at the tip. The eyes were a pale blue, andjust under the lower lip, which protruded slightly, was a small gray-redgoatee, sticking straight out from a cleft in the chin like a dab of asandy sheep's wool. Also, as the speaker swung himself further round, Itook note of a shirt of plaited white linen billowing out over his chestand ending at the top in a starchy yet rumply collar that rolledmajestically and Byronically clear up under his ears. Under the collarwas loosely knotted a black-silk tie such as sailors wear. His vest wasunbuttoned, all except the two lowermost buttons, and the sleeves ofhis coat were turned back neatly off his wrists. This, though, couldnot have been on account of the heat, because the weather wasn't veryhot yet. I learned later that, winter or summer, he always kept his coatsleeves turned back and the upper buttons of his vest unfastened. Hishands were small and plump, and his feet were small too and daintilyshod in low, square-toed shoes. About the whole man there was an airsomehow of full-bloomed foppishness gone to tassel--as though havingbeen a dandy once, he was now merely neat and precise in his way ofdress. 

He was talking along with the death of Albert Sidney Johnston for hissubject, not seeming to notice that his audience wasn't deeplyinterested. He had, it seemed, a way of stating a proposition as a fact, as an indisputable, everlasting, eternal fact, an immutable thing. Itbecame immutable through his way of stating it. Then he would frame itin the form of a question and ask it. Then he would answer it himselfand go right ahead. 

Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled up at his desk, wearing a lookof patient endurance on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor, wastrying to do his work--trying, I say, because the orator was boomingaway like a bittern within three feet of him and Harty plainly waspestered and fretful. Really the only person in sight who seemedentertained was Sidley, the exchange editor, a young man with hair thathad turned white before its time and in his eye the devil-driven look ofa man who drinks hard, not because he wants to drink but because hecan't help drinking. Sidley, as I was to find out later, had less causeto care for the old man than anybody about the shop, for he used todisarrange Sidley's neatly piled exchanges, pawing through them for hisfavorite papers. But Sidley could forget his own grievances in watchfulenjoyment of the dumb sufferings of Harty, whom he hated, as I came toknow, with the blind hate a dipsomaniac often has for any mild andperfectly harmless individual. 

As I stood there taking in the picture, the speaker, sensing astranger's presence, faced clear about and saw me. He nodded with agrave courtesy, and then paused a moment as though expecting that one ofthe others would introduce us. None of the others did introduce usthough, so he went ahead talking about Albert Sidney Johnston's death, and I turned away. I stopped by Devore's desk. 

"Who is he?" I asked. 

"That, " he said, with a kind of leashed and restrained ferocity in hisvoice, "is Major Putnam P. Stone--and the P stands for Pest, which ishis middle name--late of the Southern Confederacy. "

"Picturesque-looking old fellow, isn't he?" I said. 

"Picturesque old nuisance, " he said, and jabbed at his scalp with hispencil as though he meant to puncture his skull. "Wait until you've beenhere a few weeks and you'll have another name for him. "

"Well, anyway, he's got a good carrying voice, " I said, rather at a lossto understand Devore's bitterness. 

"Great, " he mocked venomously; "you can hear it a mile. I hear it in mysleep. So will you when you get to know him, the old bore!"

In due time I did get to know Major Stone well. He was dignified, tiresome, conversational, gentle mannered and, I think, rather lonely. By driblets, a scrap here and a scrap there, I learned something abouthis private life. He came from the extreme eastern end of the state. Hebelonged to an old family. His grandfather--or maybe it was hisgreat-grand-uncle--had been one of the first United States senators thatwent to Washington after our state was admitted into the Union. He hadnever married. He had no business or profession. From some property orother he drew an income, small, but enough to keep him in a sort ofsimple and genteel poverty. He belonged to the best club in town and themost exclusive, the Shawnee Club, and he had served four years in theConfederate army. That last was the one big thing in his life. To themajor's conceptions everything that happened before 1861 had been of apreparatory nature, leading up to and paving the way for the mainevent; and what had happened since 1865 was of no consequence, except inso far as it reflected the effects of the Civil War. 

Daily, as methodically as a milkwagon horse, he covered the same route. First he sat in the reading room of the old Gaunt House, where by anopen fire in winter or by an open window in summer he discussed theblunders of Braxton Bragg and similar congenial topics with a littlegroup of aging, fading, testy veterans. On his way to the Shawnee Clubhe would come by the Evening Press office and stay an hour, or twohours, or three hours, to go away finally with a couple of favoredexchanges tucked under his arm, and leave us with our ears still dinnedand tingling. Once in a while of a night, passing the Gaunt House on myway to the boarding house where I lived--for four dollars a week--Iwould see him through the windows, sometimes sitting alone, sometimeswith one of his cronies. 

Round the office he sometimes bothered us and sometimes he interferedwith our work; but mainly all the men on the staff liked him, I think, or at least we put up with him. In our home town each of us had knownsomebody very much like him--there used to be at least one Major Stonein every community in the South, although most of them are dead now, Iguess--so we all could understand him. When I say all I mean all butDevore. The major's mere presence would poison Devore's whole day forhim. The major's blaring notes would cross-cut Devore's nerves as with adull and haggling saw. He--Devore I mean--disliked the major with adislike almost too deep for words. It had got to be an obsession withhim. 

"You fellows that were born down here have to stand for him, " he saidonce, when the major had stumped out on his short legs after anunusually long visit. "It's part of the penalty you pay for belonging inthis country. But I don't have to venerate him and fuss over him andlisten to him. I'm a Yankee, thank the Lord!" Devore came from Michiganand had worked on papers in Cleveland and Detroit before he driftedSouth. "Oh, we've got his counterpart up my way, " he went on. "Up therehe'd be a pension-grabbing old kicker, ready to have a fit any timeanybody wearing a gray uniform got within ninety miles of him, andwriting red-hot letters of protest to the newspapers every time thestate authorities sent a captured battle flag back down South. Down herehe's a pompous, noisy old fraud, too proud to work for a living--or toolazy--and too poor to count for anything in this world. The differenceis that up in my country we've squelched the breed--we got good andtired of these professional Bloody Shirt wavers a good while ago; buthere you fuss over this man, and you'll sit round and pretend to listenwhile he drools away about things that happened before any one of youwas born. Do you fellows know what I've found out about your MajorPutnam Stone? He's a life member of the Shawnee Club--a life member, mind you! And here I've been living in this town over a year, and nobodyever so much as invited me inside its front door!"

All of which was, perhaps, true, even though Devore had an unnecessarilyharsh way of stating the case; the part about the Shawnee Club was true, at any rate, and I used to think it possibly had something to do withDevore's feelings for Major Stone. Not that Devore gave open utteranceto his feelings to the major's face. To the major he was always silentlypolite, with a little edging of ice on his politeness; he saved up hisspleen to spew it out behind the old fellow's back. Farther than that hecouldn't well afford to go anyhow. The Chief, owner of the paper and itseditor, was the major's friend. As for the major himself, he seemednever to notice Devore's attitude. For a fact, I believe he actuallyfelt a sort of pity for Devore, seeing that Devore had been born in theNorth. Not to have been born in the South was, from the major's way oflooking at the thing, a great and regrettable misfortune for which thevictim could not be held responsible, since the fault lay with hisparents and not with him. By way of a suitable return for this, Devorespent many a spare moment thinking up grotesque yet wickedlyappropriate nicknames for the major. He called him Old First and SecondManassas and Old Hardee's Tactics and Old Valley of Virginia. He calledhim an old bluffer too. 

He was wrong there, though, certainly. Though the major talked prettyexclusively about the war, I took notice that he rarely talked about thepart he himself had played in it. Indeed, he rarely discussed anybodybelow the rank of brigadier. The errors of Hood's campaign concerned himmore deeply than the personal performances of any individual. Campaignsyou might say were his specialty, campaigns and strategy. About suchthings as these he could talk for hours--and he did. 

I've known other men--plenty of them--not nearly so well educated as themajor, who could tell you tales of the war that would make you seeit--yes, and smell it too--the smoke of the campfires, the unutterablefatigue of forced marches when the men, with their tongues lolling outof their mouths like dogs, staggered along, panting like dogs; thebloody prints of unshod feet on flinty, frozen clods; the shock andfearful joy of the fighting; the shamed numbness of retreats; artilleryhorses, their hides all blood-boltered and their tails clubbed andclotted with mire, lying dead with stiff legs between overturned guns;dead men piled in heaps and living men huddled in panics--all of it. Butwhen the major talked I saw only some serious-minded officers, inwhiskers of an obsolete cut and queer-looking shirt collars, poring overmaps round a table in a farmhouse parlor. When he chewed on the cud ofthe vanished past it certainly was mighty dry chewing. 

There came a day, a few weeks after I went to work for the EveningPress, when for once anyway the major didn't seem to have anything tosay. It was in the middle of a blistering, smothering hot forenoon inearly June, muggy and still and close, when a fellow breathing felt asthough he had his nose buried in layers of damp cotton waste. The cityroom was a place fit to addle eggs, and from the composing room at theback the stenches of melting metals and stale machine oils came rollingin to us in nasty waves. With his face glistening through the tricklingsweat, the major came in about ten o'clock, fanning himself with hishat, and when he spoke his greeting the booming note seemed all meltedand gone out of his voice. He went through the city room into the roombehind the partition, and passing through a minute later I saw himsitting there with one of Sidley's exchanges unfolded across his knee, but he wasn't reading it. Presently I saw him climbing laboriously upthe stairs to the second floor where the chief had his office. Atquitting time that afternoon I dropped into the place on the corner fora beer, and I was drinking it, as close to an electric fan as I couldget, when Devore came in and made for where I was standing. I asked himto have something. 

"I'll take the same, " he said to the man behind the bar, and then to mewith a kind of explosive snap: "By George, I'm in a good mind to resignthis rotten job!" That didn't startle me. I had been in the businesslong enough to know that the average newspaper man is foreverthreatening to resign. Most of them--to hear them talk--are always juston the point of throwing up their jobs and buying a good-paying countryweekly somewhere and taking things easy for the rest of their lives, orelse they're going into magazine work. Only they hardly ever do it. SoDevore's threat didn't jar me much. I'd heard it too often. 

"What's the trouble?" I asked. "Heat getting on your nerves?"

"No, it's not the heat, " he said peevishly; "it's worse than the heat. Do you know what's happened? The chief has saddled Old Signal Corps onme. Yes, sir, I've got to take his old pet, the major, on the citystaff. It seems he's succeeded in losing what little property hehad--the chief told me some rigmarole about sudden financialreverses--and now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've got to takehim on as a reporter--a cub reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, whohasn't heard of anything worth while since Robert E. Lee surrendered!"

The pathos of the situation--if you could call it that--hit me with ajolt; but it hadn't hit Devore, that was plain. He saw only the annoyingpart of it. 

"What's he going to do?" I asked--"assignments, or cover a route likethe district men?"

"Lord knows, " said Devore. "Because the old bore knows a lot of bigpeople in this town and is friendly with all the old-timers in thestate, the chief has a wild delusion that he can pick up a lot of stuffthat an ordinary reporter wouldn't get. Rats!

"Come on, let's take another beer, " he said, and then he added: "Well, I'll just make you two predictions. He'll be a total loss as areporter--that's one prediction; and the other is that he'll have a hardtime buying his provender and his toddies over at the Shawnee Club onthe salary he'll draw down from the Evening Press. "

Devore was not such a very great city editor, as I know now in the lightof fuller experience, but I must say that as a prophet he was fairlyaccurate. The major did have a hard time living on his salary--it wastwelve a week, I learned--and as a reporter he certainly was not whatyou would call a dazzling success. He came on for duty at eight the nextmorning, the same as the rest of us, and sorry as I felt for him I hadto laugh. He had bought himself a leather-backed notebook as big as ayoung ledger, just as a green kid just out of high school would havedone, and he had a long, new, shiny, freshly sharpened lead pencilsticking out of the breast pocket of his coat. He tried to come insmartly with a businesslike air, but it wouldn't have fooled a blindman, because he was as nervous as a debutante. It struck me as one ofthe funniest things--and one of the most pathetic--I had ever seen. 

I'll say this for Devore--he tried out the major on nearly every kind ofjob; and surely it wasn't Devore's fault that the major failed on everysingle one of them. His first attempt was as typical a failure as any ofthem. That first morning Devore assigned him to cover a wedding at highnoon, high noon being the phrase we always used for a wedding that tookplace round twelve o'clock in the day. The daughter of one of thewealthiest merchants in the town, and also one of our largestadvertisers, was going to be married to the first deputy cotillionleader of the German Club, or something of that nature. Anyhow the groomwas what is known as prominent in society, and the chief wanted a spreadmade of it. Devore sent the major out to cover the wedding, and when hecame back told him to write about half a column. 

He wrote half a column before he mentioned the bride's name. He startedoff with an eight-line quotation from Walter Scott's Lady of the Lake, and then he went into a long, flowery dissertation on the sacred rite orceremony of matrimony, proving conclusively and beyond the peradventureof a doubt that it was handed down to us from remote antiquity. And heforgot altogether to tell the minister's name, and he got the groom'smiddle initial wrong--he was the kind of groom who would make a fussover a wrong middle initial, too--and along toward the end of his storyhe devoted about three closely-written pages to the military history ofthe young woman's father. It seems that her parent had served withdistinction as colonel of a North Carolina regiment. And he wound upwith a fancy flourish and handed it in. I know all these details of hisstory, because it fell to me to rewrite it. 

Devore didn't say a word when the old major reverently laid that armloadof copy down in front of him. He just sat and waited in silence untilthe major had gone out to get a bite to eat, and then he undertook toedit it. But there wasn't any way to edit it, except to throw it away. Isuppose that kind of literature went very well indeed back along about1850; I remember having read such accounts in the back files of oldweeklies, printed before the war. But we were getting out a live, snappypaper. Devore tried to pattern the local side after the New York andChicago models. As yet we hadn't reached the point where we spoke of anywhite woman without the prefix Mrs. Or Miss before her name, but we wereup-to-date in a good many other particulars. Why, it was even againstthe office rule to run "beauty and chivalry" into a story whendescribing a mixed assemblage of men and women; and when a Southernnewspaper bars out that ancient and honorable standby among phrases itis a sign that the old order has changed. 

For ten minutes or so Devore, cursing softly to himself, cut and choppedand gutted his way through the major's introduction, and betweenslashing strokes made a war map of the Balkans in his scalp with hisblue pencil. Then he lost patience altogether. 

"Here, " he said to me, "you're not doing anything, are you? Well, takethis awful bunch of mushy slush and read it through, and then try tomake a decent half-column story out of it. And rush it over a page at atime, will you? We've got to hustle to catch the three o'clock editionwith it. "

Long before three o'clock the major was back in the shop, waiting forthe first run of papers to come off the press. Furtively I watched himas he hunted through the sticky pages to find his first story. I guesshe had the budding pride of authorship in him, just as all the rest ofus have it in us. But he didn't find his story, he found mine. He didn'tsay anything, but he looked crushed and forlorn as he got up and wentaway. It was like him not to ask for any explanations, and it was likeDevore not to offer him any. 

So it went. Even if he had grown up in the business I doubt whetherMajor Putnam Stone would ever have made a newspaper man; and now he wastoo far along in life to pick up even the rudiments of the trade. Hedidn't have any more idea of news values than a rabbit. He had the mostamazing faculty for overlooking what was vital in the news, but he couldalways be depended upon to pick out some trivial and inconsequentialdetail and dress it up with about half a yard of old-point laceadjectives. He never by any chance used a short word if he could dig upa long, hard one, and he never seemed to be able to start a storywithout a quotation from one of the poets. It never was a modern poeteither. Excepting for Sidney Lanier and Father Ryan, apparently hehadn't heard of any poet worth while since Edgar Allan Poe died. Andeverything that happened seemed to remind him--at great length--ofsomething else that had happened between 1861 and 1865. When it came tolugging the Civil War into a tale, he was as bad as that character inone of Dickens' novels who couldn't keep the head of King Charles theFirst out of his literary productions. With that reared-back, flat-heeled, stiff-spined gait of his, he would go rummaging round thehotels and the Shawnee Club, meeting all sorts of people and hearing allsorts of things that a real reporter would have snatched at like ahungry dog snatching at a T-bone, and then he would remember that itwas the fortieth anniversary of the Battle of Kenesaw Mountain, orsomething, and, forgetting everything else, would come bulging andbustling back to the office, all worked up over the prospect of writingtwo or three columns about that. He just simply couldn't get theviewpoint; yet I think he tried hard enough. I guess the man who saidyou couldn't teach an old dog new tricks had particular reference to anold war dog. 

I remember mighty well one incident that illustrates the point I amtrying to make. We had a Sunday edition. We were rather vain of ourSunday edition. It carried a colored comic supplement and a section fullof special features, and we all took a more or less righteous pride init and tried hard to make it alive and attractive. We didn't alwayssucceed, but we tried all right. One Saturday night we put the Sunday tobed, and about one o'clock, when the last form was locked, three or fourof us dropped into Tony's place at the corner for a bite to eat and adrink. We hadn't been there very long when in came the old major, and atmy invitation he joined us at one of Tony's little round tables at theback of the place. As a general thing the major didn't patronize Tony's. I had never heard him say so--probably he wouldn't have said it for fearof hurting our feelings--but I somehow had gathered the impression thatthe major believed a gentleman, if he drank at all, should drink at hisclub. But it was long after midnight now and the Shawnee Club would beclosed. Ike Webb spoke up presently. 

"It's a pity we couldn't dig up the governor tonight, " he said. 

The governor had come down from the state capital about noon, and allthe afternoon and during most of the evening Webb had been trying tofind him. There was a possibility of a big story in the governor if Webbcould have found him. The major, who had been sitting there stirring histoddy in an absent-minded sort of way, spoke up casually: "I spent anhour with the governor tonight--at my club. In fact, I supped with himin one of the private dining rooms. " We looked up, startled, but themajor went right along. "Young gentlemen, it may interest you to knowthat every time I see our worthy governor I am struck more and more byhis resemblance to General Leonidas Polk, as that gallant soldier andgentleman looked when I last saw him----"

Devore, who had been sitting next to the major, with his shoulder halfturned from the old man, swung round sharply and interrupted him. 

"Major, " he said, with a thin icy stream of sarcasm trickling throughhis words, "did you and the governor by any remote chance discussanything so brutally new and fresh as the present politicalcomplications in this state?"

"Oh, yes, " said the major blandly. "We discussed them quite at somelength--or at least the governor did. Personally I do not take a greatinterest in these matters, not so great an interest as I should, perhaps, take. However, I did feel impelled to take issue with him onone point. Our governor is an honest gentleman--more than that, he was abrave soldier--but I fear he is mistaken in some of his attitudes. Iregard him as being badly advised. For example, he told me that nolonger ago than this afternoon he affixed his official signature to aveto of Senator Stickney's measure in regard to the warehouses of ourstate----"

As Devore jumped up he overturned the major's toddy right in the major'slap. He didn't stop to beg pardon, though; in fact, none of us stopped. But at the door I threw one glance backward over my shoulder. The majorwas still sitting reared back in his chair, with his wasted toddyseeping all down the front of his billowy shirt, viewing our vanishingfigures with amazement and a mild reproof in his eyes. In the one quickglance that I took I translated his expression to mean something likethis:

"Good Heavens, is this any way for a party of gentlemen to break up!This could never happen at a gentlemen's club. "

It was a foot-race back to the office, and Devore, who had the start, won by a short length. Luckily the distance was short, not quite half ablock, and the presses hadn't started yet. Working like the crew of asinking ship, we snatched the first page form back off the steam tableand pried it open and gouged a double handful of hot slugs out of thelast column--Devore blistered his fingers doing it. A couple of linotypeoperators who were on the late trick threw together the stick or two ofcopy that Webb and I scribbled off a line at a time. And while we weredoing this Devore framed a triple-deck, black-face head. So we missedonly one mail. 

The first page had a ragged, sloppy look, but anyway we were saved frombeing scooped to death on the most important story of the year. Thevetoing of the Stickney Bill vitally affected the tobacco interests, andthey were the biggest interests in the state, and half the people of thestate had been thinking about nothing else and talking about nothingelse for two months--ever since the extra session of the legislaturestarted. It was well for us too that we did save our faces, because theopposition sheet had managed to find the governor--he was stopping forthe night at the house of a friend out in the suburbs--and over thetelephone at a late hour he had announced his decision to them. But byMonday morning the major seemed to have forgotten the whole thing. Ithink he had even forgiven Devore for spilling his toddy and notstopping to apologize. 

As for Devore, he didn't say a word to the major--what would have beenthe use? To Devore's credit also I will say that he didn't run to thechief, bearing complaints of the major's hopeless incompetency. He kepthis tongue between his teeth and his teeth locked; and that must havebeen hard on Devore, for he was a flickery, high-tempered man, andnervous as a cat besides. To my knowledge, the only time he ever brokeout was when we teetotally missed the Castleton divorce story. So far asthe major's part in it was concerned, it was the Stickney veto story allover again, with variations. The Castletons were almost the richestpeople in town, and socially they stood way up. That made the scandalthat had been brewing and steeping and simmering for months all thebigger when finally it came to a boil. When young Buford Castleton gothis eyes open and became aware of what everybody else had known for ayear or more, and when the rival evening paper came out in its lastedition with the full particulars, we, over in the Evening Press shop, were plastered with shame, for we didn't have a line of it. 

A stranger dropping in just about that time would have been justified inthinking there was a corpse laid out in the plant somewhere, and thatall the members of the city staff were sitting up with the remains. Asluck would have it, it wasn't a stranger that dropped in on our grandlodge of sorrow. It was Major Putnam Stone, and as he entered the doorhe caught the tag end of what one of us was saying. 

"I gather, " he said in that large round voice of his, "that you younggentlemen are discussing the unhappy affair which, I note, is mentionedwith such signally poor taste in the columns of our sensationalcontemporary. I may state that I knew of this contemplated divorceaction yesterday. Mr. Buford Castleton, Senior, was my informant. "

"What!" Devore almost yelled it. He had the love of a true city editorfor his paper, and the love of a mother for her child or a miser for hisgold is no greater love than that, let me tell you. "You knew about thisthing here?" He beat with two fingers that danced like the prongs of atuning fork on the paper spread out in front of him. "You knew ityesterday?"

"Certainly, " said the major. "The elder Mr. Castleton bared the trulydistressing details to me at the Shawnee Club. "

"In confidence though--he told you about it in confidence, didn't he, major?" said Ike Webb, trying to save the old fellow. 

But the major besottedly wouldn't be saved. 

"Absolutely not, " he said. "There were several of us present, at leastthree other gentlemen whose names I cannot now recall. Mr. Castletonmade the disclosure as though he wished it to be known among hisfriends and his son's friends. It was quite evident to all of us that hewas entirely out of sympathy with the lady who is his daughter-in-law. "

Devore forced himself to be calm. It was almost as though he sat onhimself to hold himself down in his chair; but when he spoke his voiceran up and down the scales quiveringly. 

"Major, " he said, "don't you think it would be a good idea if you wouldadmit that the Southern Confederacy was defeated, and turned yourattention to a few things that have occurred subsequently? Why didn'tyou write this story? Why didn't you tell me, so that I could write it?Why didn't----Oh, what's the use!"

The major straightened himself up. 

"Sir, " he said, "allow me to correct you in regard to a plainmisstatement of fact. Sir, the Southern Confederacy was never defeated. It ceased to exist as a nation because we were exhausted--because ourdevastated country was exhausted. Another thing, sir, I am employed uponthis paper, I gainsay you, as a reporter, not as a scandal monger. Iwould be the last to give circulation in the public prints to anothergentleman's domestic unhappiness. I regard it as highly improper that agentleman's private affairs should be aired in a newspaper under anycircumstances. "

And with that he bowed and turned on his heel and went out, leavingDevore shaking all over with the superhuman task of trying to holdhimself in. About ten minutes later, when I came out bound for myboarding house, the major was standing at the front door. He looped oneof his absurdly small fingers into one of my buttonholes. 

"Our city editor means well, no doubt, " he said, "but he doesn'tunderstand, he doesn't appreciate our conceptions of these matters. Hewas born on the other side of the river, you know, " he said as thoughthat explained everything. Then his tone changed and anxiety crept intoit. "Do you think that I went too far? Do you think I ought to return tohim and apologize to him for the somewhat hasty and abrupt manner ofspeech I used just now?"

I told him no--I didn't know what might happen if he went back in therethen--and I persuaded him that Devore didn't expect any apology; andwith that he seemed better satisfied and walked off. As I stood therewatching him, his stiff old back growing smaller as he went away fromme, I didn't know which I blamed the more, Devore for his malignant, cold disdain of the major, or the major for his blatant stupidity. Andright then and there, all of a sudden, there came to me an understandingof a thing that had been puzzling me all these weeks. Often I hadwondered how the major had endured Devore's contempt. I had decided inmy own mind that he must be blind to it, else he would have shownresentment. But now I knew the answer. The major wasn't blind, he wasafraid; as the saying goes, he was afraid of his job. He needed it; heneeded the little scrap of money it brought him every Saturday night. That was it, I knew now. 

Knowing it made me sorrier than ever for the old man. Dimly I began torealize, I think, what his own mental attitude toward his position mustbe. Here he was, a mere cub reporter--and a remarkably bad one, a provenfailure--skirmishing round for small, inconsequential items, runningerrands really, at an age when most of the men he knew were gettingready to retire from business. Yet he didn't dare quit. He didn't dareeven to rebel against the slights of the man over him, because he neededthat twelve dollars a week. It was all, no doubt, that stood between himand actual want. His pride was bleeding to death internally. On top ofall that he was being forced into a readjustment of his whole scheme ofthings, at a time of life when its ordered routine was almost as much apart of him as his hands and feet. As I figured it, he had long beforeadjusted his life to his income, cunningly fitting in certain smallluxuries and all the small comforts; and now this income was cut to athird or a quarter perhaps of its former dimensions. It seemed a prettyhard thing for the major. It was fierce. 

Perhaps my vision was clouded by my sympathy, but I thought Major Stoneaged visibly that summer. Maybe you have noticed how it is with men whohave gone along, hale and stanch, until they reach a certain age. Whenthey do start to break they break fast. He lost some of his flesh andmost of his rosiness. The skin on his face loosened a little and becamea tallowy yellowish-red, somewhat like a winter-killed apple. 

His wardrobe suffered. One day one of his short little shoes was splitacross the top just back of the toe cap, and the next morning it waspatched. Pretty soon the other shoe followed suit--first a crack in theleather, then a clumsy patch over the crack. He wore his black slouchhat until it was as green in spots as a gage plum; and late in August hesupplanted it with one of those cheap, varnished brown-straw hats thatcost about thirty-five cents apiece and look it. 

His linen must have been one of his small extravagances. Thosemajestically collared garments with the tremendous plaited bosoms andthe hand worked eyelets, where the three big flat gold studs went in, never came ready made from any shop. They must have been built to hismeasure and his order. Now he wore them until there were gaped placesbetween the plaits where the fine, fragile linen had ripped lengthwise, and the collars were frayed down and broken across and caved in limply. Finally he gave them up too, and one morning came to work wearing aflimsy, sleazy, negligee shirt. I reckon you know the kind of shirt Imean--always it fits badly, and the sleeves are always short and thebosom is skimpy, and the color design is like bad wall-paper. After hisold full-bosomed grandeur this shirt, with a ten-cent collar buttoned onto it and overriding the neckband, and gaping away in the front so thatthe major's throat showed, seemed to typify more than anything else thedays upon which he had fallen. About this time I thought his voice tookon a changed tone permanently. It was still hollow, but it no longerrang. 

A good many men similarly placed would have taken to drink, but MajorPutnam Stone plainly was never born to be a drunkard and hard timescouldn't make one of him. With a sort of gentle, stupid persistence hehung fast to his poor job, blundering through some way, strugglingconstantly to learn the first easy tricks of the trade--the a, b, c's ofit--and never succeeding. He still lugged the classical poets and thewar into every story he tried to write, and day after day Devoremaintained his policy of eloquent brutal silence, refusing dumbly toaccept the major's clumsy placating attempts to get upon a betterfooting with him. After that once he had never attempted to scold theold man, but he would watch the major pottering round the city room, and he would chew on his under lip and viciously lance his scalp withhis pencil point. 

Well, aside from the major, Devore had his troubles that summer. Thatwas the summer of the biggest, bitterest campaign that the state hadseen, so old-timers said, since Breckinridge ran against Douglas andboth of them against Lincoln. If you have ever lived in the South, probably you know something of political fights that will divide a stateinto two armed camps, getting hotter and hotter until old slumberinganimosities come crawling out into the open, like poison snakes fromunder a rock, and new lively ones hatch from the shell every hour or soin a multiplying adder brood. 

This was like that, only worse. Stripped of a lot of embroidery in theshape of side issues and local complications, it resolved itself in alast-ditch, last-stand, back-to-the-wall fight of the old régime of theparty against the new. On one side were the oldsters, bearers of famousnames some of them, who had learned politics as a trade and followed itas a profession. Almost to a man they were professional office holders, professional handshakers, professional silver tongues. And against themwere pitted a greedy, hungry group of younger men, less showy perhaps intheir persons, less picturesque in their manner of speech, but filledeach one with a great yearning for office and power; and they brought tothe aid of their vaulting ambitions a new and a faultlessly runningmachine. From the outset the Evening Press had championed the cause ofthe old crowd--the state-house ring as the enemy called it, when theydidn't call it something worse. We championed it not as a Northern or anEastern paper might, in a sedate, half-hearted way, but fiercely andwholly and blindly--so blindly that we could see nothing in our ownfaction but what was good and high and pure, nothing in the other butwhat was smutted with evil intent. In daily double-leaded editorialcolumns the chief preached a Holy War, and in the local pages we foughtthe foe tooth and nail, biting and gouging and clawing, and they gougedand clawed back at us like catamounts. That was where the hard work fellupon Devore. He had to keep half his scanty staff working on politicswhile the other half tried to cover the run of the news. 

If I live to be a thousand years old I am not going to forget the stateconvention that began at two o'clock that muggy September afternoon atLyric Hall up on Washington Street in the old part of the town. Onceupon a time, twenty or thirty years before, Lyric Hall had been thebiggest theater in town. The stage was still there and the boxes, and atthe back there were miles--they seemed miles anyway--of ancient, crumbling, dauby scenery stacked up and smelling of age and decay. Boothand Barrett had played there, and Fanny Davenport and Billy Florence. Now, having fallen from its high estate, it served alteredpurposes--conventions were held at Lyric Hall and cheap masquerade ballsand the like. 

The press tables that had been provided were not, strictly speaking, press tables at all. They were ordinary unpainted kitchen tables, rangedtwo on one side and two on the other side at the front of the stage, close up to the old gas-tipped footlights; and when we came in by theback way that afternoon and found our appointed places I was struck bycertain sinister facts. Usually women flocked to a state convention. Byrights there should have been ladies in the boxes and in the balcony. Now there wasn't a woman in sight anywhere, only men, row after row ofthem. And there wasn't any cheering, or mighty little of it. When I tellyou the band played Dixie all the way through with only a stray whoopnow and then, you will understand better the temper of that crowd. 

The situation, you see, was like this: One side had carried the mountainend of the state; the other had carried the lowlands. One side had sweptthe city; that meant a solid block of more than a hundred delegates. Theother side had won the small towns and the inland counties. So it stoodlowlander against highlander, city man against country man, and thebitter waters of those ancient feuds have their wellsprings back athousand years in history, they tell me. One side led slenderly oninstructed vote. The other side had enough contesting delegations onhand to upset the result if these contestants or any considerableproportion of them should be recognized in the preliminary organization. 

One side held a majority of the delegates who sat upon the floor; theother side had packed the balcony and the aisles and the corners withits armed partizans. One side was in the saddle and determined; theother afoot and grimly desperate. And it was our side, as I shall callit, meaning by that the state-house ring, that for the moment had thewhiphand; and it was the other side, led in person by State SenatorStickney, god of the new machine, that stood ready to wade hip deepthrough trouble to unhorse us. 

Just below me, stretching across the hall from side to side in favoredfront places, sat the city delegates--Stickney men all of them. And asmy eye swept the curved double row of faces it seemed to me I saw thereevery man in town with a reputation as a gun-fighter or a knife-fighteror a fist-fighter; and every one of them wore, pinning his delegate'sbadge to his breast, a Stickney button that was round and bright red, like a clot of blood on his shirt front. 

They made a contrast, these half-moon lines of blocky men, to the lank, slouch-hatted, low-collared country delegates--farmers, schoolteachers, country doctors and country lawyers--who filled the seatsbehind them and on beyond them. To the one group politics was a businessin which there was money to be made and excitement to be had; to theother group it was a passion, veritably a sacredly high and seriousthing, which they took as they did their religion, with a solemn, intolerant, Calvinistic sincerity. There was one thing, though, they allshared in common. Whether a man's coat was of black alpaca or stripedflannel, the right-hand pocket sagged under the weight of unseenironmongery; or if the coat pocket didn't sag there was a bulging clumpback under the skirts on the right hip. For all the heat, hardly a manthere was in his shirtsleeves; and it would have been funny to watch howcarefully this man or that eased himself down into his seat, favoringhis flanks against the pressure of his hardware--that is to say, itwould have been funny if it all hadn't been so deadly earnest. 

You could fairly smell trouble cooking in that hall. In any corneralmost there were the potential makings of half a dozen prominentfunerals. There was scarce a man, I judged, but nursed a private grudgeagainst some other man; and then besides these there was the big issueitself, which had split the state apart lengthwise as a butcher'scleaver splits a joint. Looking out over that convention, you couldread danger spelled out everywhere, in everything, as plain as print. 

I was where I could read it with particular and uncomfortabledistinctness, too, for I had the second place at the table that had beenassigned to the Evening Press crew. There were four of us inall--Devore, who had elected to be in direct charge of the detail; IkeWebb, our star man, who was to handle the main story; I who was to writethe running account--and, fourthly and lastly, Major Putnam Stone. Themajor hadn't been included in the assignment originally, but littlePinky Gilfoil had turned up sick that morning, and the chief decided themajor should come along with us in Gilfoil's place. The chief had adeluded notion that the major could circulate on a roving commission andpick up spicy scraps of gossip. But here, for this once anyway, was aconvention wherein there were no spicy bits of gossip to be pickedup--curse words, yes, and cold-chilled fighting words, but notgossip--everything focused and was summed up in the one main point:Should the majority rule the machine or should the machine rule themajority? So the major sat there at the far inside corner of the tabledoing nothing at all--Devore saw to that--and was rather in the way. Forthe time I forgot all about him. 

The clash wasn't long in coming. It came on the first roll call of thecounties. Later we found out that the Stickney forces had beencounting, all along, on throwing the convention into a disorder of suchproportions as to force an adjournment, trusting then to theiracknowledged superiority at organization to win some strong strategicadvantage in the intervening gap of time. Failing there they meant toraise a cry of unfairness and walk out. That then was theirprogram--first the riot and then, as a last resort, the bolt. But theyhad men in their ranks, high-tempered men who, like so many skittishcolts, wouldn't stand without hitching. The signals crossed and thethunder cracked across that calm-before-the-storm situation before therewas proper color of excuse either for attack or for retreat. 

It came with scarcely any warning at all. Old Judge Marcellus Barbee, the state chairman, called the convention to order, he standing at alittle table in the center of the stage. Although counted as our man, the judge was of such uncertain fiber as to render it doubtful whose manhe really was. He was a kindly, wind-blown old gentleman, who very muchagainst his will had been drawn unawares, as it were, into the middle ofthis fight, and he was bewildered by it all--and not only bewildered butunhappy and frightened. His gavel seemed to quaver its raps outtimorously. 

A pastor of one of the churches, a reverend man with a bleak, worriedface, prayed the Good Lord that peace and good-will and wise counselmight rule these deliberations, and then fled away as though fearing themocking echoes of his own Amen. Summoning his skulking voice out of hislower throat, Judge Barbee bade the secretary of the state committeecall the counties. The secretary got as far as Blanton, the third countyalphabetically down the list. And Blanton was one of the contestedcounties. So up rose two rival chairmen of delegations, each wavingaloft his credentials, each demanding the right to cast the vote of freeand sovereign Blanton, each shaking a clenched fist at the other. Up gotthe rival delegations from Blanton. Up got everybody. Judge Barbee, witha gesture, recognized the rights of the anti-Stickney delegation. Jeersand yells broke out, spattering forth like a skirmish fire, then almostinstantly were merged into a vast, ominous roar. Chairs began tooverturn. Not twenty feet from me the clattering of the chairman'sgavel, as he vainly beat for order, sounded like the clicking of atelegraph instrument in a cyclone. 

I saw the sergeant-at-arms--who was our man too--start down the middleaisle and saw him trip over a hostile leg and stumble and fall, and Isaw a big mountaineer drop right on top of him, pinning him flat to thefloor. I saw the musicians inside the orchestra rail, almost under myfeet, scuttling away in two directions like a divided covey of gorgeousblue and red birds. I saw the snare drummer, a little round German, puthis foot through the skin roof of his own drum. I saw Judge Barbeeoverturn the white china pitcher of ice water that sweated on the tableat his elbow, and as the cold stream of its contents spattered down thelegs of his trousers saw him staring downward, contemplating hisdrenched limbs as though that mattered greatly. 

All in a flash I saw these things, and in that same flash I saw, takingshape and impulse, a groundswell of men, all wearing red buttons, rolling toward the stage, with the picked bad men of the city wards forits crest; and out of the tail of my eye I saw too, stealing out fromthe rear of the stage, a small, compact wedge of men wearing those samered buttons; and the prow of the wedge was Fighting Dave Dancy, theofficial bad man of a bad county, a man who packed a gun on each hip andcarried a dirk knife down the back of his neck; a man who would shootyou at the drop of a hat and provide the hat himself--or at least so itwas said of him. 

And I realized that the enemy, coming by concerted agreement from frontand rear at once, had nipped those of us who were upon the stage asbetween two closing walls, and I was exceedingly unhappy to be there. Iducked my head low, waiting for the shooting to begin. Afterward wefigured it out that nobody fired the first shot because everybody knewthe first shot would mean a massacre, where likely enough a man wouldkill more friends than foes. 

What happened now in the space of the next few seconds I saw withparticular clarity of vision, because it happened right alongside me andin part right over me. I recall in especial Mink Satterlee. MinkSatterlee was one of the worst men in town, and he ran the worst saloonand prevailed mightily in ward politics. He had been sitting just belowour table in the front row of seats. He was a big-bodied man, fat-necked, but this day he showed himself quick on his feet as anytoe-dancer. Leading his own forces by a length, he vaulted the orchestrarail and lit lightly where a scared oboe player had been squatted amoment before; Mink breasted the gutterlike edging of the footlights andleaped upward, teetering a moment in space. One of his hands grabbed outfor a purchase and closed on the leg of our table and jerked it almostfrom under us. 

At that Devore either lost his head or else indignation made himreckless. Still half sitting, he kicked out at the wriggling bulk at hisfeet, and the toe of his shoe took Mink Satterlee in his chest. It was apuny enough kick; it didn't even shake Mink Satterlee loose from wherehe clung. He gave a bellow and heaved himself up on the stage and, before any of us could move, grabbed Devore by the throat with his lefthand and jammed him back, face upward, on the table until I thoughtDevore's spine would crack. His right hand shot into his coat pocket, then, quick as a snake, came out again, showing the fat fist armed witha set of murderously heavy brass knucks, and he bent his arm in acrooked sickle-like stroke, aiming for Devore's left temple. I've alwaysbeen satisfied--and so has Devore--that if the blow had landed true hisskull would have caved in like a puff-ball. Only it never landed. 

Above me a shadow of something hung for the hundredth part of a second, something white flashed over me and by me, moving downward whizzingly;something cracked on something; and Mink Satterlee breathed a gentlelittle grunt right in Devore's face and then relaxed and slid down onthe floor, lying half under the table and half in the tin trough wherethe stubby gas jets of the footlights stood up, with his legs protrudingstiffly out over its edge toward his friends. Subconsciously I notedthat his socks were not mates, one of them being blue and one black;also that his scalp had a crescent-shaped split place in it just betweenand above his half-closed eyes. All this, though, couldn't have takenone-fifth of the time it has required for me to tell it. It couldn'thave taken more than a brace of seconds, but even so it was time enoughfor other things to happen; and I looked back again toward the center ofthe stage just as Fighting Dave Dancy seized startled old Judge Barbeeby the middle from behind and flung him aside so roughly that the oldman spun round twice, clutching at nothing, and then sat down very hard, yards away from where he started spinning. 

Dancy stooped for the gavel, which had fallen from the judge's hand, being minded, I think, to run the convention awhile in the interest ofhis own crowd. But his greedy fingers never closed over its black-walnuthandle, because, facing him, he saw just then what made him freeze solidwhere he was. 

Out from behind the Evening Press table and through a scattering huddleof newspaper reporters, stepping on the balls of his feet as lightly asa puss-cat, emerged Major Putnam Stone. His sleeves were turned back offhis wrists and his vest flared open. His head was thrust forward so thatthe tuft of goatee on his chin stuck straight out ahead of him like alittle burgee in a fair breeze. His face was all a clear, bright, glowing pink; and in his right hand he held one of the longest cavalryrevolvers that ever was made, I reckon. It had a square-butted ivoryhandle, and as I saw that ivory handle I knew what the white thing wasthat had flashed by me only a moment before to fell Mink Satterlee soexpeditiously. 

Writing this, I've been trying to think of the one word that would bestdescribe how Major Putnam Stone looked to me as he advanced on DaveDancy. I think now that the proper word is competent, for indeed the oldmajor did look most competent--the tremendous efficiency he radiatedfilled him out and made him seem sundry sizes larger than he really was. A great emergency acts upon different men as chemical processes act upondifferent metals. Some it melts like lead, so that their resolutionsoftens and runs away from them; and some it hardens to tempered steel. There was the old major now. Always before this he had seemed to me tobe but pot metal and putty, and here, poised, alert, ready--awire-drawn, hard-hammered Damascus blade of a man--all changed andtransformed and glorified, he was coming down on Dave Dancy, finger ontrigger, thumb on hammer, eye on target, dominating the whole scene. 

Ten feet from him he halted and there was nobody between them. Somehoweverybody else halted too, some even giving back a little. Over the edgeof the stage a ring of staring faces, like a high-water mark, showedwhere the onward rushing swell of the Stickney city delegates hadchecked itself. Seemingly to all at once came the realization that thedestinies of the fight had by the chances of the fight been entrusted tothese two men--to Dancy and the major--and that between them the issuewould be settled one way or the other. 

Still at a half crouch, Dancy's right hand began to steal back under theskirt of his long black coat. At that the major flung up the muzzle ofhis weapon so that it pointed skyward, and he braced his left arm at hisside in the attitude you have seen in the pictures of dueling scenes ofolden times. 

"I am waiting, sir, for you to draw, " said the major quite briskly. "Iwill shoot it out with you to see whether right or might shall controlthis convention. " And his heels clicked together like castanets. 

Dancy's right hand kept stealing farther and farther back. And then youcould mark by the change of his skin and by the look out of his eyes howhis courage was clabbering to whey inside him, making his face a milky, curdled white, the color of a poorly stirred emulsion, and then hequit--he quit cold--his hand came out again from under his coat tailsand it was an empty hand and wide open. It was from that moment on thatthroughout our state Fighting Dave Dancy ceased to be Fighting Dave andbecame instead Yaller Dave. 

"Then, sir, " said the major, "as you do not seem to care to shoot it outwith me, man to man, you and your friends will kindly withdraw from thisstage and allow the business of this convention to proceed in an orderlymanner. "

And as Dave Dancy started to go somebody laughed. In another second wewere all laughing and the danger was over. When an American crowdbegins laughing the danger is always over. 

 * * * * *

Newspaper men down in that town still talk about the story that Ike Webbwrote for the last edition of the Evening Press that afternoon. It was agreat story, as Ike Webb told it--how, still sitting on the floor, oldJudge Barbee got his wits back and by word of mouth commissioned themajor a special sergeant-at-arms; how the major privily sent men toclose and lock and hold the doors so that the Stickney people couldn'tget out to bolt, even if they had now been of a mind to do so; how theconvention, catching the spirit of the moment, elected the major itstemporary chairman, and how even after that, for quite a spell, untilsome of his friends bethought to remove him, Mink Satterlee sleptpeacefully under our press table with his mismated legs bridged acrossthe tin trough of the footlights. 

 * * * * *

In rapid succession a number of unusual events occurred in the EveningPress shop the next morning. To begin with, the chief came down early. He had a few words in private with Devore and went upstairs. When themajor came at eight as usual, Devore was waiting for him at the door ofthe city room; and as they went upstairs together, side by side, I sawDevore's arm steal timidly out and rest a moment on the major'sshoulder. 

The major was the first to descend. Walking unusually erect, even forhim, he bustled into the telephone booth. Jessie, our operator, told usafterward that he called up a haberdasher, and in a voice that boomedlike a bell ordered fourteen of those plaited-bosom shirts of his, thesame to be made up and delivered as soon as possible. Then he stalkedout. And in a minute or two more Devore came down looking happy andunhappy and embarrassed and exalted, all of them at once. On his way tohis desk he halted midway of the floor. 

"Gentlemen, " he said huskily--"fellows, I mean--I've got an announcementto make, or rather two announcements. One is this: Right here before youfellows who heard most of them I want to take back all the mean things Iever said about him--about Major Stone--and I want to say I'm sorry forall the mean things I've done to him. I've tried to beg his pardon, buthe wouldn't listen--he wouldn't let me beg his pardon--he--he saideverything was all right. That's one announcement. Here's the other: Themajor is going to have a new job with this paper. He's going to leavethe city staff. Hereafter he's going to be upstairs in the room next tothe chief. He's gone out now to pick out his own desk. He's going towrite specials for the Sunday--specials about the war. And he's goingto do it on a decent salary too. "

I judge by my own feelings that we all wanted to cheer, but didn'tbecause we thought it might sound theatrical and foolish. Anyhow, I knowthat was how I felt. So there was a little awkward pause. 

"What's his new title going to be?" asked somebody then. 

"The title is appropriate--I suggested it myself, " said Devore. "MajorStone is going to be war editor. "

V

SMOKE OF BATTLE

This befell during the period that Major Putnam Stone, at the age ofsixty-two, held a job as cub reporter on the Evening Press and worked atit until his supply of fine linen and the patience of City EditorWilbert Devore frazzled out practically together. The episode to which Iwould here direct attention came to pass in the middle of a particularlyhot week in the middle of that particularly hot and grubby summer, at atime when the major was still wearing the last limp survivor of his onceadequate stock of frill-bosomed, roll-collared shirts, and when Devore'sscanty stock of endurance had already worn perilously near the snappingpoint. 

As may be recalled, Major Stone lived a life of comparative leisure fromthe day he came out of the Confederate army, a seasoned veteran, untilthe day he joined the staff of the Evening Press, a rank beginner; andof these two employments one lay a matter of four decades back in ahalf-forgotten past, while the other was of pressing moment, having todo with Major Stone's enjoyment of his daily bread and other elements ofnutrition regarded as essential to the sustenance of human life. In hismilitary career he might have been more or less of a success. Certainlyhe must have acquitted himself with some measure of personal credit; therank he had attained in the service and the standing he had subsequentlyenjoyed among his comrades abundantly testified to that. 

As a reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forthin some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought andspeech--hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing;and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon thethings that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he verynaturally--and very frequently--forgot that to a newspaper reporterevery day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday always isor always should be ancient history, let alone the time-tarnishedyesterdays of forty-odd years ago. Indeed I doubt whether the major evercomprehended that first commandment of the prentice reporter'scatechism. 

Devore, himself no grand and glittering success as a newspaper man, nevertheless had mighty little use for the pottering, ponderous oldmajor. Devore did not believe that bricks could be made without straw. He considered it a waste of time and raw material to try. Through thatsummer he kept the major on the payroll solely because the chief sowilled it. But, though he might not discharge the major, at least hecould bait him--and bait him Devore did--not, mind you, with words, butwith a silent, sublimated contempt more bitter and more biting than anywords. 

So there, on the occasion in question, the situation stood--the majorhanging on tooth and nail to his small job, because he needed mostdesperately the twelve dollars a week it brought him; the city editorregarding him and all his manifold reportorial sins of omission, commission and remission with a corrosive, speechless venom; and therest of us in the city room divided in our sympathies as between thosetwo. We sympathized with Devore for having to carry so woful anincompetent upon his small and overworked crew; we sympathized with thekindly, gentle, tiresome old major for his bungling, vain attempts tocreditably cover the small and piddling assignments that came his way. 

I remember the date mighty well--the third of July. For three days nowthe Democratic party, in national convention assembled at Chicago, hadbeen in the throes of labor. It had been expected--in fact had been asgood as promised--that by ten o'clock that evening the deadlock wouldmelt before a sweetly gushing freshet of party harmony and the head ofthe presidential ticket would be named, wherefore in the Evening Pressshop a late shift had stayed on duty to get out an extra. Back in thepress-room the press was dressed. A front page form was made up andready, all but the space where the name of the nominee would be insertedwhen the flash came; and in the alley outside a picked squad ofnewsboys, renowned for speed of the leg and carrying quality of thevoice, awaited their wares, meanwhile skylarking under the eye of acirculation manager. 

Besides, there was no telling when an arrest might be made in theBullard murder case--that just by itself would provide ample excuse foran extra. Two days had passed and two nights since the killing ofAttorney-at-Law Rodney G. Bullard, and still the killing, to quote afavorite line of the local descriptive writers, "remained shrouded inimpenetrable mystery. " If the police force, now busily engaged inrunning clues into theories and theories into the ground, should by anyblind chance of fortune be lucky enough to ascertain the identity andlay hands upon the person of Bullard's assassin, the whole town, regardless of the hour, would rise up out of bed to read the news of it. It was the biggest crime story that town had known for ten years; one ofthe biggest crime stories it had ever known. 

In the end our waiting all went for nothing. There were no developmentsat Central Station or elsewhere in the Bullard case, and at Chicagothere was no nomination. At nine-thirty a bulletin came over our leasedwire saying that Tammany, having been beaten before the ResolutionsCommittee, was still battling on the floor for its candidate; so thatfinally the convention had adjourned until morning, and now thedelegates were streaming out of the hall, too tired to cheer and almosttoo tired to jeer--all of which was sad news to us, because it meantthat, instead of taking a holiday on the Fourth, we must work until noonat least, and very likely until later. Down that way the Fourth was notobserved with quite the firecrackery and skyrockety enthusiasm thatmarked its celebration in most of the states to the north of us;nevertheless, a day off was a day off and we were deeply disgusted atthe turn affairs had taken. It was almost enough to make a fellow feelfriendly toward the Republicans. 

Following the tension there was a snapback; a feeling of languor anddisappointment possessed us. Devore slammed down the lid of his desk anddeparted, cursing the luck as he went. Harty, the telegraph editor, andWilbur, the telegraph operator, rolled down their shirtsleeves and, taking their coats over their arms, departed in company for Tony's placeup at the corner, where cool beers were to be found and electric fans, and a business men's lunch served at all hours. 

That left in the city room four or five men. Sprawled upon batteredchairs and draped over battered desks, they inhaled the smells of rancidgreases that floated in to them from the back of the building; theycoddled their disappointment to keep it warm and they talked shop. Whenit comes to talking shop in season and out of season, neither stockactors nor hospital surgeons are worse offenders than newspaperreporters--especially young newspaper reporters, as all these men wereexcept only Major Stone. 

It was inevitable that the talk should turn upon the Bullard murder, andthat the failure of the police force to find the killer or even to finda likely suspect should be the hinge for its turning. For the moment IkeWebb had the floor, expounding his own pet theories. Ike was a goodtalker--a mighty good reporter too, let me tell you. Across the roomfrom Ike, tilted back in a chair against the wall, sat the major, looking shabby and a bit forlorn. For a month now shabbiness had beenseizing on the major, spreading over him like a mildew. It started firstwith his shoes, which turned brown and then cracked across the toes, itextended to his hat, which sagged in its brim and became a moldy greenin its crown, and now it had touched his coat lapels, his waistcoatfront, his collar--his rolling Lord Byron collar--and his sleeve ends. 

The major's harmlessly pompous manner was all gone from him that night. Of late his self-assurance had seemed to be fraying and frazzling away, along with those old-timey, full-bosomed shirts of which he had in timesgone by been so tremendously proud. It was as though the passing of theone marked the passing of the other--symbolic as you might say. Formerly, too, the major had also excelled mightily in miscellaneousconversation, dominating it by sheer weight of tediousness. Now he satsilent while these youngsters with their unthatched lips--born, most ofthem, after he reached middle age--babbled the jargon of their trade. Heconsidered a little ravelly strip along one of his cuffs solicitously. 

Ike Webb was saying this--that the biggest thing in the whole createdworld was a big scoop--an exclusive, world-beating, bottled-up scoop ofa scoop. Nothing that could possibly come into a reporter's life wasone-half so big and so glorious and satisfying. He warmed to his theme:

"Gee! fellows, but wouldn't it be great to get a scoop on a thing likethis Bullard murder! Just suppose now that one of us, all by himself, found the person who did the shooting and got a full confession fromhim, whoever he was; and got the gun that it was done with--got thewhole thing--and then turned it loose all over the front page beforethat big stiff of a Chief Gotlieb down at Central Station knew a thingabout it. Beating the police to it would be the best part of that job. That's the way they do things in New York. In New York it's thenewspapers that do the real work on big murder mysteries, and the policetake their tips from them. Why, some of the best detectives in New Yorkare reporters. Look what they did in that Guldensuppe case! Look at whatthey've done in half a dozen other big cases! Down here we just followalong, like sheep, behind a bunch of fat-necked cops, taking theirleavings. Up there a paper turns a man loose, with an unlimited expenseaccount and all the time he needs, and tells him to go to it. That's theright way too!"

By that the others knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had toldhim. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from themetropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do--unawares--twoweeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dustyright-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks andthen, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change hecould and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown, leaving us dazzled by the careless, somewhat patronizing brilliance ofhis manner, and stuffed to our earlobes with tales of the splendid, adventurous, bohemian lives that newspaper men in New York lived. 

"Well, I know this, " put in little Pinky Gilfoil, who was red-headed, red-freckled and red-tempered: "I'd give my right leg to pull off thatBullard story as a scoop. No, not my right leg--a reporter needs all thelegs he's got; but I'd give my right arm and throw in an eye for goodmeasure. It would be the making of a reporter in this town--he'd have'em all eating out of his hand after that. " He licked his lips. Even thebare thought of the thing tasted pretty good to Pinky. 

"Now you're whistling!" chimed Ike Webb. "The fellow who single-handedgot that tale would have a job on this paper as long as he lived. Thechief would just naturally have to hand him more money. In New York, though, he'd get a big cash bonus besides, an award they call it upthere. I'd go anywhere and do anything and take any kind of a chance toland that story as an exclusive--yes, or any other big story. "

To all this the major, it appeared, had been listening, for now he spokeup in a pretty fair imitation of his old impressive manner:

"But, young gentlemen--pardon me--do you seriously think--any ofyou--that any honorarium, however large, should or could be sufficienttemptation to induce one in your--in our profession--to give utterancein print to a matter that he had learned, let us say, in confidence?And suppose also that by printing it he brought suffering or disgraceupon innocent parties. Unless one felt that he was serving the best endsof society--unless one, in short, were actuated by the highest of humanmotives--could one afford to do such a thing? And, under anycircumstances, could one violate a trust--could one violate the commonobligation of a gentleman's rules of deportment----"

"Major, " broke in Ike Webb earnestly, "the way I look at it, a reportercan't afford too many of the luxuries you're mentioning. His duty, itseems to me, is to his paper first and the rest of the world afterward. His paper ought to be his mother and his father and all his family. Ifhe gets a big scoop--no matter how he gets it or where he gets it--heought to be able to figure out some way of getting it into print. It'snot alone what he owes his paper--it's what he owes himself. PersonallyI wouldn't be interested for a minute in bringing the person that killedRod Bullard to justice--that's not the point. He was a pretty shadyperson--Rod Bullard. By all accounts he got what was coming to him. It'sthe story itself that I'd want. "

"Say, listen here, major, " put in Pinky Gilfoil, suddenly possessed of astrengthening argument; "I reckon back yonder in the Civil War, when youall got the smoke of battle in your noses, you didn't stop to considerthat you were about to make a large crop of widows and orphans andcause suffering to a whole slue of innocent people that'd never done youany harm! You didn't stop then, did you? I'll bet you didn't--you justsailed in! It was your duty--the right thing to do--and you just wentand did it. 'War is hell!' Sherman said. Well, so is newspaper workhell--in a way. And smelling out a big story ought to be the same to areporter that the smoke of battle is to a soldier. That's right--I'llleave it to any fellow here if that ain't right!" he wound up, forgetting in his enthusiasm to be grammatical. 

It was an unfortunate simile to be making and Pinky should have knownbetter, for at Pinky's last words the old major's mild eye widened and, expanding himself, he brought his chair legs down to the floor with athump. 

"Ah, yes!" he said, and his voice took on still more of its old ringingquality. "Speaking of battles, I am just reminded, young gentlemen, thattomorrow is the anniversary of the fall of Vicksburg. ThoughNorthern-born, General Pemberton was a gallant officer--none of our ownSouthern leaders was more gallant--but it has always seemed to me thathis defense of Vicksburg was marked by a series of the most lamentableand disastrous mistakes. If you care to listen, I will explain further. "And he squared himself forward, with one short, plump hand raised, readyto tick off his points against Pemberton upon his fingers. 

By experience dearly bought at the expense of our ear-drums, the membersof the Evening Press staff knew what that meant; for as you alreadyknow, the major's conversational specialty was the Civil War--it and itscampaigns. Describing it, he made even war a commonplace and a tiresometopic. In his hands an account of the hardest fought battle became atremendously uninteresting thing. He weeded out all the thrills and intheir places planted hedges of dusty, deadly dry statistics. When themajor started on the war it was time to be going. One by one theyoungsters got up and slipped out. Presently the major, booming awaylike a bell buoy, became aware that his audience had dwindled. Only IkeWebb remained, and Ike was getting upon his feet and reaching for thepeg where his coat swung. 

"I'm sorry to leave you right in the middle of your story, major; but, honestly, I've got to be going, " apologized Ike. "Good night, and don'tforget this, major"--Ike had halted at the door--"when a big story comesyour way freeze to it with both hands and slam it across the plate as ascoop. Do that and you can give 'em all the laugh. Good night again--seeyou in the morning, major!"

He grinned to himself as he turned away. The major was a mighty decent, tender-hearted little old scout, a gentleman by birth and breeding, even if he was down and out and dog-poor. It was a shame that Devorekept him skittering round on little picayunish jobs--running errands, that was really what it was. Still, at that, the old major was noreporter and never would be. He wouldn't know a big story if he ran intoit on the big road--it would have to burst right in his face before herecognized it. And even then the chances were that he wouldn't know whatto do with it. It was enough to make a fellow grin. 

Deserted by the last of his youthful compatriots--which was what hehimself generally called them--the major lingered a moment in heavythought. He glanced about the cluttered city room, now suddenly grownlarge and empty. This was the theater where his own little drama ofunfitness and failure and private mortification had been staged andacted. It had run nearly a month now, and a month is a long run for asmall tragedy in a newspaper office or anywhere else. He shook his head. He shook it as though he were trying to shake it clear of a job lot ofold-fashioned, antiquated ideals--as though he were trying to make roomfor newer, more useful, more modern conceptions. Then he settled hisaged and infirm slouch hat more firmly upon his round-domed skull, straightened his shoulders and stumped out. 

At the second turning up the street from the office an observantonlooker might have noticed a small, an almost imperceptible change inthe old man's bearing. There was not a sneaky bone in the major'sbody--he walked as he thought and as he talked, in straight lines; butbefore he turned the corner he glanced up and down the empty sidewalk ina quick, furtive fashion, and after he had swung into the side street atrifle of the steam seemed gone from his stiff-spined, hard-heeled gait. It ceased to be a strut; it became a plod. 

The street he had now entered was a badly lighted street, with longstretches of murkiness between small patches of gas-lamped brilliance. By day the houses that walled it would have showed themselves as shabbyand gone to seed--the sort of houses that second cousins move into afterfirst families have moved out. Two-thirds of the way along the block themajor turned in at a sagged gate. He traversed a short walk of seamedand decrepit flagging, where tufts of rank grass sprouted between thefractures in the limestone slabs, and mounted the front porch of a housethat had cheap boarding house written all over it. 

When the major opened the front door the tepid smell that gushed out togreet him was the smell of a cheap boarding house too, if you know whatI mean--a spilt-kerosene, boiled-cabbage, dust-in-the-corners smell. Once upon a time the oilcloth upon the floor of the entry way hadexhibited a vivid and violent pattern of green octagons upon a red andyellow background, but that had been in some far distant day of itsyouth and freshness. Now it was worn to a scaly, crumbly color ofnothing at all, and it was frayed into fringes at the door and in placesscuffed clear through, so that the knot-holes of the naked plankingshowed like staring eyes. 

Standing just inside the hall, the major glanced down first at the floorand then up to where in a pendent nub a pinprick of light like a captivelightning-bug flickered up and down feebly as the air pumped through thepipe; and out of his chest the major fetched a small sigh. It was a sighof resignation, but it had loneliness in it too. Well, it was acome-down, after all these peaceful and congenial years spent among themarble-columned, red-plushed glories of the old Gaunt House, to beliving in this place. 

The major had been here now almost a month. Very quietly, almostsecretly, he had come hither when he found that by no amount ofstretching could his pay as a reporter on the Evening Press be made tocover the cost of living as he had been accustomed to live prior to thatdisastrous day when the major waked up in the morning to find that allhis inherited investments had vanished over night--and, vanishing so, had taken with them the small but sufficient income that had always beenample for his needs. 

In that month the major had seen but one or two of his fellow lodgers, slouching forms that passed him by in the gloom of the half-lightedhallways or on the creaky stairs. His landlady he saw but once aweek--on Saturday, which was settlement day. She was a forlorn, graycreature, half blind, and she felt her way about gropingly. By the droopin her spine and by the corners of her lips, permanently puckered fromholding pins in her mouth, a close observer would have guessed that shehad been a seamstress before her eyes gave out on her and she took tokeeping lodgers. Of the character of the establishment the innocent oldmajor knew nothing; he knew that it was cheap and that it was on a quietby-street, and for his purposes that was sufficient. 

He heaved another small sigh and passed slowly up the worn steps of thestairwell until he came to the top of the house. His room was on theattic floor, the middle room of the three that lined the bare hall onone side. The door-knob was broken off; only its iron center remained. His fingers slipped as he fumbled for a purchase upon the metal core;but finally, after two attempts, he gripped it and it turned, admittinghim into the darkness of a stuffy interior. The major made haste to openthe one small window before he lit the single gas jet. Its guttery flareexposed a bed, with a thin mattress and a skimpy cover, shoved close upunder the sloping wall; a sprained chair on its last legs; an oldhorsehide trunk; a shaky washstand of cheap yellow pine, garnished forthwith an ewer and a basin; a limp, frayed towel; and a minute segment ofpale pink soap. 

Major Stone was in the act of removing his coat when he became aware ofa certain sound, occurring at quick intervals. In the posture of a plumpand mature robin he cocked his head on one side to listen; and now heremembered that he had heard the same sound the night before, and thenight before that. These times, though, he had heard it intermittentlyand dimly, as he tossed about half awake and half asleep, trying toaccommodate his elderly bones to the irregularities of his hot anduncomfortable bed. But now he heard it more plainly, and at once herecognized it for what it was--the sound of a woman crying; a wrenchingsuccession of deep, racking gulps, and in between them little moaning, panting breaths, as of utter exhaustion--a sound such as might bedistilled from the very dregs of a grief too great to be borne. 

He looked about him, his eyes and ears searching for further explanationof this. He had it. There was a door set in the cross-wall of hisroom--a door bolted and nailed up. It had a transom over it and againstthe dirty glass of the transom a light was reflected, and through thedoor and the transom the sound came. The person in trouble, whoever itmight be, was in that next room--and that person was a woman and she wasin dire distress. There was a compelling note in her sobbing. 

Undecided, Major Stone stood a minute rubbing his nose pensively with asmall forefinger; then the resolution to act fastened upon him. Heslipped his coat back on, smoothed down his thin mane of reddish grayhair with his hands, stepped out into the hall and rapped delicatelywith a knuckled finger upon the door of the next room. There was noanswer, so he rapped a little harder; and at that a sob checked itselfand broke off chokingly in the throat that uttered it. From within avoice came. It was a shaken, tear-drained voice--flat and uncultivated. 

"Who's there?" The major cleared his throat. "Is it a woman--or a man?"demanded the unseen speaker without waiting for an answer to the firstquestion. 

"It is a gentleman, " began the major--"a gentleman who----"

"Come on in!" she bade him--"the door ain't latched. "

And at that the major turned the knob and looked into a room that waspractically a counterpart of his own, except that, instead of a trunk, acheap imitation-leather suitcase stood upright on the floor, its sidesbulging and strained from over-packing. Upon the bed, fully dressed, was stretched a woman--or, rather, a girl. Her head was just rising fromthe crumpled pillow and her eyes, red-rimmed and widely distended, stared full into his. 

What she saw, as she sat up, was a short, elderly man with a solicitous, gentle face; the coat sleeves were turned back off his wrists and hislinen shirt jutted out between the unfastened upper buttons andbuttonholes of his waistcoat. What the major saw was a girl of perhapstwenty or maybe twenty-two--in her present state it was hard toguess--with hunched-in shoulders and dyed, stringy hair falling in astreaky disarray down over her face like unraveled hemp. 

It was her face that told her story. Upon the drawn cheeks and thedrooped, woful lips there was no dabbing of cosmetics now; theprofessional smile, painted, pitiable and betraying, was lacking fromthe characterless mouth, yet the major--sweet-minded, clean-living oldman though he was--knew at a glance what manner of woman he had foundhere in this lodging house. It was the face of a woman who neverintentionally does any evil and yet rarely gets a chance to do anygood--a weak, indecisive, commonplace face; and every line in it was aline of least resistance. 

That then was what these two saw in each other as they stared a momentacross the intervening space. It was the girl who took the initiative. 

"Are you one of the police?" Then instantly on the heels of the query:"No; I know better'n that--you ain't no police!"

Her voice was unmusical, vulgar and husky from much weeping. Magically, though, she had checked her sobbing to an occasional hard gulp thatclicked down in her throat. 

"No, ma'am, " said Major Stone, with a grave and respectful courtesy, "Iam not connected with the police department. I am a professionalman--associated at this time with the practice of journalism. I have theapartment or chamber adjoining yours and, accidentally overhearing amember of the opposite sex in seeming distress, I took it upon myself tooffer any assistance that might lie within my power. If I am intruding Iwill withdraw. "

"No, " she said; "it ain't no intrusion. I wisht, please, sir, you'd comein jest a minute anyway. I feel like I jest got to talk to somebody aminute. I'm sorry, though, if I disturbed you by my cryin'--but I jestcouldn't help it. Last night and the night before--that was the firstnight I come here--I cried all night purty near; but I kept my head inthe bedclothes. But tonight, after it got dark up here and me layin'here all alone, I felt as if I couldn't stand it no longer. Honest, Ilike to died! Right this minute I'm almost plum' distracted. "

The major advanced a step. 

"I assure you I deeply regret to learn of your unhappiness, " he said. "If you desire it I will be only too glad to summon our worthy landlady, Miss--Miss----" he paused. 

"Miss La Mode, " she said, divining--"Blanche La Mode--that's my name. Icome from Indianapolis, Indiana. But please, mister, don't call thatthere woman. I don't want to see her. For a while I didn't think Iwanted to see nobody, and yit I've known all along, from the very first, that sooner or later I'd jest naturally have to talk to somebody. I knewI'd jest have to!" she repeated with a kind of weak intensity. "And itmight jest as well be you as anybody, I guess. "

She sat up on the side of the bed, dangling her feet, and subconsciouslythe major took in fuller details of her attire--the cheap white slipperswith rickety, worn-down high heels; the sleazy stockings; theover-decorated skirt of shabby blue cloth; the soiled and rumpled waistof coarse lace, gaping away from the scrawny neck, where the fasteningshad pulled awry. Looped about her throat and dangling down on her flatbreast, where they heaved up and down with her breathing, was a doublestring of pearls that would have been worth ten thousand dollars hadthey been genuine pearls. A hand which was big-knuckled and thin held asmall, moist wad of handkerchief. About her there was somethingunmistakably bucolic, and yet she was town-branded, too, flesh andsoul. Major Stone bowed with the ceremonious detail that was a part ofhim. 

"My name, ma'am, is Stone--Major Putnam Stone, at your service, " he toldher. 

"Yes, sir, " she said, seeming not to catch either his name or his title. "Well, mister, I'm goin' to tell you something that'll maybe surpriseyou. I ain't goin' to ast you not to tell anybody, 'cause I guess youwill anyhow, sooner or later; and it don't make much difference if youdo. But seems's if I can't hold in no longer. I guess maybe I'll feeleasier in my own mind when I git it all told. Shet that door--jest closeit--the lock is broke--and set down in that chair, please, sir. "

The major closed the latchless door and took the one tottery chair. Thegirl remained where she was, on the side of her bed, her slippered feetdangling, her eyes fixed on a spot where there was a three-corneredbreak in the dirty-gray plastering. 

"You know about Rodney G. Bullard, the lawyer, don't you?--about himbein' found shot day before yistiddy evenin' in the mouth of thatalley?" she asked. 

"Yes, ma'am, " he said. "Though I was not personally acquainted with theman himself, I am familiar with the circumstances you mention. "

"Well, " she said, with a sort of jerk behind each word, "it was me thatdone it!"

"I beg your pardon, " he said, half doubting whether he had heardaright, "but what was it you said you did?"

"Shot him!" she answered--"I was the one that shot him--with this thinghere. " She reached one hand under the pillow and drew out ashort-barreled, stubby revolver and extended it to him. Mechanically hetook it, and thereafter for a space he held it in his hands. The girlwent straight on, pouring out her sentences with a driven, desperateeagerness. 

"I didn't mean to do it, though--God knows I didn't mean to do it! Hetreated me mighty sorry--it was lowdown and mean all the way through, the way he done me--but I didn't mean him no real harm. I was onlyaimin' to skeer him into doin' the right thing by me. It wasaccidental-like--it really was, mister! In all my life I ain't neverintentionally done nobody any harm. And yit it seems like somebody'sforever and a day imposin' on me!" She quavered with the puny passion ofher protest against the world that had bruised and beaten her as withrods. 

Shocked, stunned, the major sat in a daze, making little clucking soundsin his throat. For once in his conversational life he couldn't think ofthe right words to say. He fumbled the short pistol in his hands. 

[Illustration: "I WAS THE ONE THAT SHOT HIM--WITH THIS THING HERE. "--_Page 164. _]

"I'm goin' to tell you the whole story, jest like it was, " she went onin her flat drone; and the words she spoke seemed to come to him from along way off. "That there Rodney Bullard he tricked me somethin'shameful. He come to the town where I was livin' to make a speech in apolitical race, and we got acquainted and he made up to me. I wasworkin' in a hotel there--one of the dinin' room help. That was twoyears ago this comin' September. Well, the next day, when he left, hegot me to come 'long with him. He said he'd look after me. I liked himsome then and he talked mighty big about what he was goin' to do for me;so I come with him. He told me that I could be his----" She hesitated. 

"His amanuensis, perhaps, " suggested the old man. 

"Which?" she said. "No; it wasn't that way--he didn't say nothin' aboutmarryin' me and I didn't expect him to. He told me that I should be hisgirl--that was all; but he didn't keep his word--no, sir; right from thevery first he broke his word to me! It wasn't more'n a month after I gothere before he quit comin' to see me at all. Well, after that I stayed aspell longer at the house where I was livin' and then I went to anotherhouse--Vic Magner's. You know who she is, I reckin?"

The major half nodded, half shook his head. 

"By reputation only I know the person in question, " he answered a bitstiffly. 

"Well, " she went on, "there ain't so much more to tell. I've been sicklately--I had a right hard spell. I ain't got my strength all back yit. I was laid up three weeks, and last Monday, when I was up and jestbarely able to crawl round, Vic Magner, she come to me and told me thatI'd have to git out unless I could git somebody to stand good for myboard. I owed her for three weeks already and I didn't have but ninedollars to my name. I offered her that, but she said she wanted it allor nothin'. I think she wanted to git shet of me anyway. Mister, I wasmighty weak and discouraged--I was so! I didn't know what to do. 

"I hadn't seen Rod Bullard for goin' on more than a year, but he was theonly one I could think of; so I slipped out of the house and went acrostthe street to a grocery store where there was a pay station, and Icalled him up on the telephone and ast him to help me out a little. Itwasn't no more than right that he should, was it, seein' as he wasresponsible for my comin' here? Besides, if it hadn't been for him inthe first place I wouldn't never 'a' got into all that trouble. I talkedwith him over the telephone at his office and he said he'd do somethin'for me. He said he'd send me some money that evenin' or else he'd bringit round himself. But he didn't do neither one. And Vic Magner, she kepton doggin' after me for her board money. 

"I telephoned him again the next mornin'; but before I could say more'ntwo words to him he got mad and told me to quit botherin' him, and herung off. That was day before yistiddy. When I got back to the house VicMagner come to me, and I couldn't give her no satisfaction. So about sixo'clock in the evenin' she made me pack up and git out. I didn't havenowheres to go and only eight dollars and ninety cents left--I'd spent adime telephoning so, before I got out I took and wrote Rod Bullard anote, and when I got outside I give a little nigger boy fifteen cents totake it to him. I told him in the note I was out in the street, withoutnowheres to go, and that if he didn't meet me that night and dosomethin' for me I'd jest have to come to his office. I said for him tomeet me at eight o'clock at the mouth of Grayson Street Alley. That giveme two hours to wait. I walked round and round, packin' my baggage. 

"Then I come by a pawnstore and seen a lot of pistols in the window, andI went in and I bought one for two dollars and a half. The pawnstore manhe throwed in the shells. But I wasn't aimin' to hurt Rod Bullard--jestto skeer him. I was thinkin' some of killin' myself too. Then I walkedround some more till I was plum' wore out. 

"When eight o'clock come I was waitin' where I said, and purty soon hecome along. As soon as he saw me standin' there in the shadder he bulgedup to me. He was mighty mad. He called me out of my name and said Ididn't have no claims on him--a whole lot more like that--and said hedidn't purpose to be bothered with me phonin' him and writin' him notesand callin' on him for money. I said somethin' back, and then he madelike he was goin' to hit me with his fist. I'd had that pistol in myhand all the time, holdin' it behind my skirt. And I pulled it and Ipointed it like I was goin' to shoot--jest to skeer him, though, andmake him do the right thing by me. I jest simply pointed it athim--that's all. I didn't have no idea it would go off without youpulled the hammer back first!

"Then it happened! It went off right in my hand. And he said to me: 'Nowyou've done it!'--jest like that. He walked away from me about ten feet, and started to lean up against a tree, and then he fell down right smackon his face. And I grabbed up my baggage and run away. I wasn't sorryabout him. I ain't been sorry about him a minute since--ain't thatfunny? But I was awful skeered!"

Rocking her body back and forth from the hips, she put her hands up toher face. Major Stone stared at her, his mind in a twisting eddy ofconfused thoughts. Perhaps it was the clearest possible betrayal of hisutter unfitness for his new vocation in life that not until that verymoment when the girl had halted her narrative did it come to him--and itcame then with a sudden jolt--that here he had one of those monumentalnews stories for which young Gilfoil or young Webb would be willing tobarter his right arm and throw in an eye for good measure. It was ascoop, as those young fellows had called it--an exclusive confession ofa big crime--a thing that would mean much to any paper and to anyreporter who brought it to his paper. It would transform a failure intoa conspicuous success. It would put more money into a pay envelope. Andhe had it all! Sheer luck had brought it to him and flung it into hislap. 

Nor was he under any actual pledge of secrecy. This girl had told it tohim freely, of her own volition. It was not in the nature of her to keepher secret. She had told it to him, a stranger; she would tell it toother strangers--or else somebody would betray her. And surely thissickly, slack-twisted little wanton would be better off inside thestrong arm of the law than outside it? No jury of Southern men wouldconvict her of murder--the thought was incredible. She would be kindlydealt with. In one illuminating flash the major divined that these wouldhave been the inevitable conclusions of any one of those ambitious youngmen at the office. He bent forward. 

"What did you do then, ma'am?" he asked. 

"I didn't know what to do, " she said, dropping her hands into her lap. "I run till I couldn't run no more, and then I walked and walked andwalked. I reckin I must 'a' walked ten miles. And then, when I was jestabout to drop, I come past this house. There was a light burnin' on theporch and I could make out to read the sign on the door, and it saidLodgers Taken. 

"So I walked in and rung the bell, and when the woman came I said I'djest got here from the country and wanted a room. She charged me twodollars a week, in advance; and I paid her two dollars down--and sheshowed me the way up here. 

"I've been here ever since, except twice when I slipped out to buy mesomethin' to eat at a grocery store and to git some newspapers. At firstI figgered the police would be a-comin' after me; but they didn't--therewasn't nobody at all seen the shootin', I reckin. And I was skeered VicMagner might tell on me; but I guess she didn't want to run no risk ofgittin' in trouble herself--that Captain Brennan, of the SecondPrecinct, he's been threatenin' to run her out of town the first goodchance he got. And there wasn't none of the other girls there thatknowed I ever knew Rod Bullard. So, you see, I ain't been arrested yit. 

"Layin' here yistiddy all day, with nothin' to do but think and cry, Imade up my mind I'd kill myself. I tried to do it. I took that therepistol out and I put it up to my head and I said to myself that all Ihad to do was jest to pull on that trigger thing and it wouldn't hurtme but a secont--and maybe not that long. But I couldn't do it, mister--I jest couldn't do it at all. It seemed like I wanted to die, and yit I wanted to live too. All my life I've been jest that way--firstthinkin' about doin' one thing and then another, and hardly ever doin'either one of 'em. 

"Here on this bed tonight I got to thinkin' if I could jest tellsomebody about it that maybe after that I'd feel easier in my mind. Andright that very minute you come and knocked on the door, and I knowed itwas a sign--I knowed you was the one for me to tell it to. And so I'vedone it, and already I think I feel a little bit easier in my mind. Andso that's all, mister. But I wisht please you'd take that pistol awaywith you when you go--I don't never want to see it again as long as Ilive. "

She paused, huddling herself in a heap upon the bed. The major's shortarm made a gesture toward the cheap suitcase. 

"I observe, " he said, "that your portmanteau is packed as if for ajourney. Were you thinking of leaving, may I ask?"

"My which?" she said. "Oh, you mean my baggage! Yes; I ain't neverunpacked it since I come here. I was aimin' to go back to my home--I gota stepsister livin' there and she might take me in--only after payin'for this room I ain't got quite enough money to take me there; and now Idon't know as I want to go, either. If I kin git my strength back Imight stay on here--I kind of like city life. Or I might go up toCincinnati. A girl that I used to know here is livin' there now and shewrote to me a couple of times, and I know her address--it was backed onthe envelope. Still, I ain't sure--my plans ain't all made yit. Sometimes I think I'll give myself up, but most generally I think Iwon't. I've got to do somethin' purty soon though, one way or another, because I ain't got but a little over three dollars left out of what Ihad. "

She sank her head in the pillow wearily, with her face turned away fromhim. The major stood up. Into his side coat pocket he slipped therevolver that had snuffed out the late and unsavory Rodney Bullard'slight of life, and from his trousers pocket he slowly drew forth hissupply of ready money. He had three silver dollars, one quarter, onedime, and a nickel--three-forty in all. Contemplating the disks of metalin the palm of his hand, he did a quick sum in mental arithmetic. Thiswas Thursday night now. Saturday afternoon at two he would draw a payenvelope containing twelve dollars. Meantime he must eat. Well, if hestinted himself closely a dollar might be stretched to bridge the gapuntil Saturday. The major had learned a good deal about the noble art ofstinting these last few weeks. 

On the coverlet alongside the girl he softly piled two of the silverdollars and the forty cents in change. Then, after a momentaryhesitation, he put down the third silver dollar, gathered up the fortycents, slid it gently into his pocket and started for the door, theloose planks creaking under his tread. At the threshold he halted. 

"Good night, Miss La Mode, " he said. "I trust your night's repose may berestful and refreshing to you, ma'am. "

She lifted her face from the pillow and spoke, without turning to lookat him. 

"Mister, " she said, "I've told you the whole truth about that thing andI ain't goin' to lie to you about anythin' else. I didn't come fromIndianapolis, Indiana, like I told you. My home is in Swainboro', thisstate--a little town. You might know where it is? And my real name ain'tLa Mode, neither. I taken it out of a book--the La Mode part--and Ialways did think Blanche was an awful sweet name for a girl. But my realname is Gussie Stammer. Good night, mister. I'm much obliged to you ferlistenin', and I ain't goin' to disturb you no more with my cryin' if Ikin help it. "

As the major gently closed her door behind him he heard her give a long, sleepy sigh, like a tired child. Back in his own room he glanced abouthim, meanwhile feeling himself over for writing material. He found inhis pockets a pencil and a couple of old letters, whereas he knew heneeded a big sheaf of copy paper for the story he had to write. Anyway, there was no place here to do an extended piece of writing--no desk andno comfortable chair. The office would be a much better place. 

The office was only a matter of two or three blocks away. The negrowatchman would be there; he stayed on duty all night. Using the cornerof his washstand for a desk, the major set down his notes--names, places, details, dates--upon the backs of his two letters. This done, hesettled his ancient hat on his head, picked up his cane, and in anotherminute was tiptoeing down the stairs and out the front doorway. Onceoutside, his tread took on the brisk emphasis of one set upon animportant task and in a hurry to do it. 

 * * * * *

Ten minutes later Major Stone sat at his desk in the empty city room ofthe Evening Press. Except for Henry, the old black night watchman, therewas no other person in the building anywhere. Just over his head anincandescent bulb blazed, bringing out in strong relief the major'sintent old face, mullioned with crisscross lines. A cedar pencil, newlysharpened, was in his fingers; under his right hand was a block of cleancopy paper. His notes lay in front of him, the little stubnosed pistolserving as a paper weight to hold the two wrinkled envelopes flat. Through the loop of the trigger guard the words, Gussie Stammer, aliasBlanche La Mode, showed. Everything was ready. 

The major hesitated, though. He readjusted his paper and fidgeted hispencil. He scratched his head and pulled at the little tuft of goateeunder his lower lip. Like many a more experienced author, Major Stonewas having trouble getting under way. He had his own ideas about afitting introductory paragraph. Coming along, he had thought up a fullsonorous one, with a biblical injunction touching on the wages of sinembodied in it; but, on the other hand, there was to be borne in mindthe daily-dinned injunction of Devore that every important news itemshould begin with a sentence in which the whole story was summed up. Finally Major Stone made a beginning. He covered nearly a sheet ofpaper. 

Then, becoming suddenly dissatisfied with it, he tore up what he hadwritten and started all over again, only to repeat the same operation. Two salty drops rolled down his face and fell upon the paper, andinstantly little twin blistered blobs like tearmarks appeared on itsclear surface. They were not tears, though--they were drops of sweatwrung from the major's brow by the pains of creation. Again he poisedhis pencil and again he halted it in the air--he needed inspiration. Hisgaze rested absently upon the pistol; absently he picked it up and beganexamining it. 

It was a cheap, rusted, second-hand thing, poorly made, but no doubtdeadly enough at close range. He unbreeched it and spun the cylinderwith his thumb and spilled the contents into his palm--four loadedshells, suety and slick with grease, and one that had been recentlyfired; and it was discolored and flattened a trifle. Each of the fourloaded shells had a small cap like a little round staring eye set in theexact center of its flanged butt-end, but the eye of the fifth shell waspunched in. He turned the empty weapon in his hands, steadying itsmechanism, and as he did so a scent of burnt powder, stale and dead, came to him out of the fouled muzzle. He wrinkled his nose and sniffedat it. 

It had been many a long day since the major had had that smell in hisnostrils--many a long, long day. But there had been a time when it wasfamiliar enough to him. Even now it brought the clamoring memories ofthat far distant time back to him, fresh and vivid. It stimulated hisimagination, quickening his mind with big thoughts. It recalled thosefour years when he had fought for a principle, and had kept on fightingeven when the substance of the thing he fought for was gone and thereremained but the empty husks. It recalled those last few hopeless monthswhen the forlorn hope had become indeed a lost cause; when the fortycents he now carried in his pocket would have seemed a fortune; when thesorry house where he lodged now would have seemed a palace; when, without prospect or hope of reward or victory, he had piled risk uponrisk, had piled sacrifice upon sacrifice, and through it all had borneit all without whimper or complaint--fighting the good fight like asoldier, keeping the faith like a gentleman. It was the Smoke of Battle!

The major had his inspiration now, right enough. He knew just what hewould write; knew just how he would write it. He laid down the pistoland the shells and squared off and straightway began writing. For twohours nearly he wrote away steadily, rarely changing or erasing a word, stopping only to repoint the lead of his pencil. Methodically as amachine he covered sheet after sheet with his fine old-fashioned script. Never for one instant did he hesitate or falter. 

Just before one o'clock he finished. The completed manuscript, each pageof the twenty-odd pages properly numbered, lay in a neat pile beforehim. He scooped up the pistol shells and stored them in an inner breastpocket of his coat; then he opened a drawer, slipped the emptiedrevolver well back under a riffle of papers and clippings and closed thedrawer and locked it. His notes he tore into squares, and those squaresinto smaller squares--and so on until the fragments would tear no finer, but fluttered out between his fingers in a small white shower like stagesnow. 

He shoved his completed narrative back under the roll-top of Devore'sdesk, where the city editor would see it the very first thing when hecame to work; and as he straightened up with a little grunt ofsatisfaction and stretched his arms out the last of his fine-linenshirts, with a rending sound, ripped down the plaited front, fromcollarband almost to waistline. 

He eyed the ruined bosom with a regretful stare, plucking at the gapingtear with his graphite-dusted fingers and shaking his head mournfully. Yet as he stepped out into the street, bound for his lodgings, he jarredhis heels down upon the sidewalk with the brisk, snapping gait of a manwho has tackled a hard job and has done it well, and is satisfied withthe way he has done it. 

 * * * * *

Under a large black head the major's story was printed in the Fourth ofJuly edition of the Evening Press. It ran full two columns and lappedover into a third column. It was an exhaustive--and exhausting--accountof the Fall of Vicksburg. 

VI

THE EXIT OF ANSE DUGMORE

When a Kentucky mountaineer goes to the penitentiary the chances arethat he gets sore eyes from the white walls that enclose him, or quickconsumption from the thick air that he breathes. It was entirely inaccordance with the run of his luck that Anse Dugmore should get themboth, the sore eyes first and then the consumption. 

There is seldom anything that is picturesque about the man-killer of themountain country. He is lacking sadly in the romantic aspect and thedelightfully studied vernacular with which an inspired school of fictionhas invested our Western gun-fighter. No alluring jingle of beltedaccouterment goes with him, no gift of deadly humor adorns his equallydeadly gun-play. He does his killing in an unemotional, unattractivekind of way, with absolutely no regard for costume or setting. Rarely ishe a fine figure of a man. 

Take Anse Dugmore now. He had a short-waisted, thin body and abnormallylong, thin legs, like the shadow a man casts at sunup. He didn't havethat steel-gray eye of which we so often read. His eyes weren't of anyparticular color, and he had a straggly mustache of sandy red and nochin worth mentioning; but he could shoot off a squirrel's head, or aman's, at the distance of a considerable number of yards. 

Until he was past thirty he played merely an incidental part in thetribal war that had raged up and down Yellow Banks Creek and itsprincipal tributary, the Pigeon Roost, since long before the Big War. Hewas getting out timber to be floated down the river on the spring risewhen word came to him of an ambuscade that made him the head of hisimmediate clan and the upholder of his family's honor. 

"Yore paw an' yore two brothers was laywaid this mawnin' comin' 'longYaller Banks togither, " was the message brought by a breathless bearerof news. "The wimmenfolks air totin' 'em home now. Talt, he ain't deadyit. "

From a dry spot behind a log Anse lifted his rifle and started over theridge with the long, shambling gait of the born hill-climber that eatsup the miles. For this emergency he had been schooled years back when hesat by a wood fire in a cabin of split boards and listened to hiscrippled-up father reciting the saga of the feud, with the tally ofthis one killed and that one maimed; for this he had been schooled whenhe practised with rifle and revolver until, even as a boy, his aim hadbecome as near an infallible thing as anything human gets to be; forthis he had been schooled still more when he rode, armed and watchful, to church or court or election. Its coming found him ready. 

Two days he ranged the ridges, watching his chance. The Tranthams werehard to find. They were barricaded in their log-walled strongholds, wellguarded in anticipation of expected reprisals, and prepared in dueseason to come forth and prove by a dozen witnesses, or two dozen if somany should be needed to establish the alibi, that they had no hand inthe massacre of the Dugmores. 

But two days and nights of still-hunting, of patiently lying in waitbehind brush fences, of noiseless, pussy-footed patrolling in likelyplaces, brought the survivor of the decimated Dugmores his chance. Hecaught Pegleg Trantham riding down Red Bird Creek on a mare-mule. Peglegwas only a distant connection of the main strain of the enemy. It wasprobable that he had no part in the latest murdering; perhaps doubtfulthat he had any prior knowledge of the plot. But by his name and hisblood-tie he was a Trantham, which was enough. 

A writer of the Western school would have found little in this encounterthat was really worth while to write about. Above the place of themeeting rose the flank of the mountain, scarred with washes and scantilyclothed with stunted trees, so that in patches the soil showed throughlike the hide of a mangy hound. The creek was swollen by the April rainsand ran bank-full through raw, red walls. Old Pegleg came canteringalong with his rifle balanced on the sliding withers of his mare-mule, for he rode without a saddle. He was an oldish man and fat for amountaineer. A ten-year-old nephew rode behind him, with his short armsencircling his uncle's paunch. The old man wore a dirty white shirt witha tabbed bosom; a single shiny white china button held the neckbandtogether at the back. Below the button the shirt billowed open, showinghis naked back. His wooden leg stuck straight out to the side, its wornbrass tip carrying a blob of red mud, and his good leg dangled downstraight, with the trousers hitched half-way up the bare shank and asoiled white-yarn sock falling down into the wrinkled and gaping top ofan ancient congress gaiter. 

From out of the woods came Anse Dugmore, bareheaded, crusted to hisknees with dried mud and wet from the rain that had been dripping downsince daybreak. A purpose showed in all the lines of his slouchy frame. 

Pegleg jerked his rifle up, but he was hampered by the boy's arms abouthis middle and by his insecure perch upon the peaks of the slab-sidedmule. The man afoot fired before the mounted enemy could swing hisgunbarrel into line. The bullet ripped away the lower part of Pegleg'sface and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. Thewhite-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule andinstantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle droppedout of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck, grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two pacesforward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from hisgunmuzzle into his face, and fired twice rapidly. The mule was bouncingup and down, sideways, in a mild panic. Pegleg rolled off her, as inertas a sack of grits, and lay face upward in the path, with his arms wideoutspread on the mud. The mule galloped off in a restrained anddignified style until she was a hundred yards away, and then, havingsnorted the smells of burnt powder and fresh blood out of her nostrils, she fell to cropping the young leaves off the wayside bushes, mouthingthe tender green shoots on her heavy iron bit contentedly. 

For a long minute Anse Dugmore stood in the narrow footpath, listening. Then he slid three new shells into his rifle, and slipping down the bankhe crossed the creek on a jam of driftwood and, avoiding the roads thatfollowed the little watercourse, made over the shoulder of the mountainfor his cabin, two miles down on the opposite side. When he was gonefrom sight the nephew of the dead Trantham rolled out of his hidingplace and fled up the road, holding one hand to his wounded cheek andwhimpering. Presently a gaunt, half-wild boar pig, with his spine archedlike the mountains, came sniffing slowly down the hill, pausingfrequently to cock his wedge-shaped head aloft and fix a hostile eye ontwo turkey buzzards that began to swing in narrowing circles over oneparticular spot on the bank of the creek. 

The following day Anse sent word to the sheriff that he would be comingin to give himself up. It would not have been etiquette for the sheriffto come for him. He came in, well guarded on the way by certain of hisclan, pleaded self-defense before a friendly county judge and was lockedup in a one-cell log jail. His own cousin was the jailer and ministeredto him kindly. He avoided passing the single barred window of the jailin the daytime or at night when there was a light behind him, and heexpected to "come clear" shortly, as was customary. 

But the Tranthams broke the rules of the game. The circuit judge livedhalf-way across the mountains in a county on the Virginia line; he wasnot an active partizan of either side in the feud. These Tranthams, disregarding all the ethics, went before this circuit judge and askedhim for a change of venue, and got it, which was more; so that insteadof being tried in Clayton County--and promptly acquitted--Anse Dugmorewas taken to Woodbine County and there lodged in a shiny new brick jail. Things were in process of change in Woodbine. A spur of the railroad hadnosed its way up from the lowlands and on through the Gap, and had madeLoudon, the county-seat, a division terminal. Strangers from the Northhad come in, opening up the mountains to mines and sawmills and bringingwith them many swarthy foreign laborers. A young man of large hopes andan Eastern college education had started a weekly newspaper and wastalking big, in his editorial columns, of a new order of things. Thefoundation had even been laid for a graded school. Plainly WoodbineCounty was falling out of touch with the century-old traditions of hersisters to the north and west of her. 

In due season, then, Anse Dugmore was brought up on a charge ofhomicide. The trial lasted less than a day. A jury of strangers heardthe stories of Anse himself and of the dead Pegleg's white-eyed nephew. In the early afternoon they came back, a wooden toothpick in each mouth, from the new hotel where they had just had a most satisfying fifty-centdinner at the expense of the commonwealth, and sentenced the defendant, Anderson Dugmore, to state prison at hard labor for the balance of hisnatural life. 

The sheriff of Woodbine padlocked on Anse's ankles a set of leg ironsthat had been made by a mountain blacksmith out of log chains and ledhim to the new depot. It was Anse Dugmore's first ride on a railroadtrain; also it was the first ride on any train for Wyatt Trantham, headof the other clan, who, having been elected to the legislature whileAnse lay in jail, had come over from Clayton, bound for the statecapital, to draw his mileage and be a statesman. 

It was not in the breed for the victorious Trantham to taunt his hobbledenemy or even to look his way, but he sat just across the aisle from theprisoner so that his ear might catch the jangle of the heavy irons whenDugmore moved in his seat. They all left the train together at thelittle blue-painted Frankfort station, Trantham turning off at the firstcrossroads to go where the round dome of the old capitol showed abovethe water-maple trees, and Dugmore clanking straight ahead, with astring of negroes and boys and the sheriff following along behindhim. Under the shadow of a quarried-out hillside a gate openedin a high stone wall to admit him into life membership with awhite-and-black-striped brotherhood of shame. 

Four years there did the work for the gangling, silent mountaineer. Oneday, just before the Christmas holidays, the new governor of the statepaid a visit to the prison. Only his private secretary came with him. The warden showed them through the cell houses, the workshops, thedining hall and the walled yards. It was a Sunday afternoon; the whiteprisoners loafed in their stockade, the blacks in theirs. In a corner onthe white side, where the thin and skimpy winter sunshine slanted overthe stockade wall, Anse Dugmore was squatted; merely a rack of bonesenclosed in a shapeless covering of black-and-white stripes. On hisclose-cropped head and over his cheekbones the skin was stretched sotight it seemed nearly ready to split. His eyes, glassy and bleared withpain, stared ahead of him with a sick man's fixed stare. Inside hisconvict's cotton shirt his chest was caved away almost to nothing, andfrom the collarless neckband his neck rose as bony as a plucked fowl's, with great, blue cords in it. Lacking a coverlet to pick, his fingerspicked at the skin on his retreating chin. 

As the governor stood in an arched doorway watching, the lengtheningafternoon shadow edged along and covered the hunkered-down figure by thewall. Anse tottered to his feet, moved a few inches so that he mightstill be in the sunshine, and settled down again. This small exertionstarted a cough that threatened to tear him apart. He drew his handacross his mouth and a red stain came away on the knotty knuckles. Thewarden was a kindly enough man in the ordinary relations of life, butnine years as a tamer of man-beasts in a great stone cage had overlaidhis sympathies with a thickening callus. 

"One of our lifers that we won't have with us much longer, " he saidcasually, noting that the governor's eyes followed the sick convict. "When the con gets one of these hill billies he goes mighty fast. "

"A mountaineer, then?" said the governor. "What's his name?"

"Dugmore, " answered the warden; "sent from Clayton County. One of thoseClayton County feud fighters. "

The governor nodded understandingly. "What sort of a record has he madehere?"

"Oh, fair enough!" said the warden. "Those man-killers from themountains generally make good prisoners. Funny thing about this fellow, though. All the time he's been here he never, so far as I know, had amessage or a visitor or a line of writing from the outside. Nor wrote aletter out himself. Nor made friends with anybody, convict or guard. "

"Has he applied for a pardon?" asked the governor. 

"Lord, no!" said the warden. "When he was well he just took what wascoming to him, the same as he's taking it now. I can look up his record, though, if you'd care to see it, sir. "

"I believe I should, " said the governor quietly. 

A spectacled young wife-murderer, who worked in the prison office onthe prison books, got down a book and looked through it until he came toa certain entry on a certain page. The warden was right--so far as theblack marks of the prison discipline went, the friendless convict'srecord showed fair. 

"I think, " said the young governor to the warden and his secretary whenthey had moved out of hearing of the convict bookkeeper--"I think I'llgive that poor devil a pardon for a Christmas gift. It's no more than amercy to let him die at home, if he has any home to go to. "

"I could have him brought in and let you tell him yourself, sir, "volunteered the warden. 

"No, no, " said the governor quickly. "I don't want to hear that coughagain. Nor look on such a wreck, " he added. 

Two days before Christmas the warden sent to the hospital ward for No. 874. No. 874, that being Anse Dugmore, came shuffling in and kepthimself upright by holding with one hand to the door jamb. The wardensat rotund and impressive, in a swivel chair, holding in his hands afolded-up, blue-backed document. 

"Dugmore, " he said in his best official manner, "when His Excellency, Governor Woodford, was here on Sunday he took notice that your generalhealth was not good. So, of his own accord, he has sent you anunconditional pardon for a Christmas gift, and here it is. "

The sick convict's eyes, between their festering lids, fixed on thewarden's face and a sudden light flickered in their pale, glazedshallows; but he didn't speak. There was a little pause. 

"I said the governor has given you a pardon, " repeated the warden, staring hard at him. 

"I heered you the fust time, " croaked the prisoner in his eaten-outvoice. "When kin I go?"

"Is that all you've got to say?" demanded the warden, bristling up. 

"I said, when kin I go?" repeated No. 874. 

"Go!--you can go now. You can't go too soon to suit me!"

The warden swung his chair around and showed him the broad of hisindignant back. When he had filled out certain forms at his desk heshoved a pen into the silent consumptive's fingers and showed himcrossly where to make his mark. At a signal from his bent forefinger anegro trusty came forward and took the pardoned man away and helped himput his shrunken limbs into a suit of the prison-made slops, of cheap, black shoddy, with the taint of a jail thick and heavy on it. A deputywarden thrust into Dugmore's hands a railroad ticket and the fivedollars that the law requires shall be given to a freed felon. He tookthem without a word and, still without a word, stepped out of the gatethat swung open for him and into a light, spitty snowstorm. With theinbred instinct of the hillsman he swung about and headed for thelittle, light-blue station at the head of the crooked street. He wentslowly, coughing often as the cold air struck into his wasted lungs, andsometimes staggering up against the fences. Through a barred window thewondering warden sourly watched the crawling, tottery figure. 

"Damned savage!" he said to himself. "Didn't even say thank you. I'llbet he never had any more feelings or sentiments in his life than amoccasin snake. "

Something to the same general effect was expressed a few minutes laterby a brakeman who had just helped a wofully feeble passenger aboard theeastbound train and had steered him, staggering and gasping fromweakness, to a seat at the forward end of an odorous red-plush daycoach. 

"Just a bundle of bones held together by a skin, " the brakeman wassaying to the conductor, "and the smell of the pen all over him. Neversaid a word to me--just looked at me sort of dumb. Bound for plumb up atthe far end of the division, accordin' to the way his ticket reads. Idoubt if he lives to get there. "

The warden and the brakeman both were wrong. The freed man did live toget there. And it was an emotion which the warden had never suspectedthat held life in him all that afternoon and through the comfortlessnight in the packed and noisome day coach, while the fussy, self-sufficient little train went looping, like an overgrown measuringworm, up through the blue grass, around the outlying knobs of thefoothills, on and on through the great riven chasm of the gateway into ableak, bare clutch of undersized mountains. Anse Dugmore had two badhemorrhages on the way, but he lived. 

 * * * * *

Under the full moon of a white and flawless night before Christmas, ShemDugmore's squatty log cabin made a blot on the thin blanket of snow, andinside the one room of the cabin Shem Dugmore sat alone by thedaubed-clay hearth, glooming. Hours passed and he hardly moved except tostir the red coals or kick back some ambitious ember of hickory thatleaped out upon the uneven floor. Suddenly something heavy fell limplyagainst the locked door, and instantly, all alertness, the shock-headedmountaineer was backed up against the farther wall, out of range of thetwo windows, with his weapons drawn, silent, ready for what might come. After a minute there was a feeble, faint pecking sound--half knock, halfscratch--at the lower part of the door. It might have been a wornout dogor any spent wild creature, but no line of Shem Dugmore's figurerelaxed, and under his thick, sandy brows his eyes, in the flickeringlight, had the greenish shine of an angry cat-animal's. 

"Whut is it?" he called. "And whut do you want? Speak out peartly!"

[Illustration: HE DRAGGED THE RIFLE BY THE BARREL, SO THAT ITS BUTT MADEA CROOKED FURROW IN THE SNOW. --_Page 197. _]

The answer came through the thick planking thinly, in a sort of gaspingwhine that ended in a chattering cough; but even after Shem's ear caughtthe words, and even after he recognized the changed but still familiarcadence of the voice, he abated none of his caution. Carefully heunbolted the door, and, drawing it inch by inch slowly ajar, he reachedout, exposing only his hand and arm, and drew bodily inside the shell ofa man that was fallen, huddled up, against the log door jamb. He droppedthe wooden crossbar back into its sockets before he looked a second timeat the intruder, who had crawled across the floor and now lay before thewide mouth of the hearth in a choking spell. Shem Dugmore made no moveuntil the fit was over and the sufferer lay quiet. 

"How did you git out, Anse?" were the first words he spoke. 

The consumptive rolled his head weakly from side to side and swalloweddesperately. "Pardoned out--in writin'--yistiddy. "

"You air in purty bad shape, " said Shem. 

"Yes, "--the words came very slowly--"my lungs give out on me--and myeyes. But--but I got here. "

"You come jist in time, " said his cousin; "this time tomorrer and youwouldn't a' never found me here. I'd 'a' been gone. "

"Gone!--gone whar?"

"Well, " said Shem slowly, "after you was sent away it seemed like themTranthams got the upper hand complete. All of our side whut ain'tdead--and that's powerful few--is moved off out of the mountings toWinchester, down in the settlemints. I'm 'bout the last, and I'ma-purposin' to slip out tomorrer night while the Tranthams is at theirChristmas rackets--they'd layway me too ef----"

"But my wife--did she----"

"I thought maybe you'd heered tell about that whilst you was down yon, "said Shem in a dulled wonder. "The fall after you was took away yorewoman she went over to the Tranthams. Yes, sir; she took up with thehead devil of 'em all--old Wyatt Trantham hisself--and she went to liveat his house up on the Yaller Banks. "

"Is she----Did she----"

The ex-convict was struggling to his knees. His groping skeletons ofhands were right in the hot ashes. The heat cooked the moisture from hissodden garments in little films of vapor and filled the cabin with thereek of the prison dye. 

"Did she--did she----"

"Oh, she's been dead quite a spell now, " stated Shem. "I would haves'posed you'd 'a' heered that, too, somewhars. She had a kind of arisin' in the breast. "

"But my young uns--little Anderson and--and Elviry?"

The sick man was clear up on his knees now, his long arms hanging andhis eyes, behind their matted lids, fixed on Shem's impassive face. Could the warden have seen him now, and marked his attitude and hiswords, he would have known what it was that had brought this dying manback to _his_ own mountain valley with the breath of life still in him. A dumb, unuttered love for the two shock-headed babies he had leftbehind in the split-board cabin was the one big thing in Anse Dugmore'swhole being--bigger even than his sense of allegiance to the feud. 

"My young uns, Shem?"

"Wyatt Trantham took 'em and he kep' 'em--he's got 'em both now. "

"Does he--does he use 'em kindly?"

"I ain't never heered, " said Shem simply. "He never had no young uns ofhis own, and it mout be he uses 'em well. He's the high sheriff now. "

"I was countin' on gittin' to see 'em agin--an buyin 'em some littleChrismus fixin's, " the father wheezed. Hopelessness was coming into hisrasping whisper. "I reckon it ain't no use to--to be thinkin'--of thatthere now?"

"No 'arthly use at all, " said Shem, with brutal directness. "Ef you hadthe strength to git thar, the Tranthams would shoot you down like a ficedog. "

Anse nodded weakly. He sank down again on the floor, face to the boards, coughing hard. It was the droning voice of his cousin that brought himback from the borders of the coma he had been fighting off for hours. 

For, to Shem, the best hater and the poorest fighter of all hiscleaned-out clan, had come a great thought. He shook the drowsing manand roused him, and plied him with sips from a dipper of the unhallowedwhite corn whisky of a mountain still-house. And as he worked over himhe told off the tally of the last four years: of the uneven, unmercifulwar, ticking off on his blunt finger ends the grim totals of this oneambushed and that one killed in the open, overpowered and beaten underby weight of odds. He told such details as he knew of the theft of theyoung wife and the young ones, Elvira and little Anderson. 

"Anse, did ary Trantham see you a-gittin' here tonight?"

"Nobody--that knowed me--seed me. "

"Old Wyatt Trantham, he rid into Manchester this evenin' 'bout fo'o'clock--I seed him passin' over the ridge, " went on Shem. "He'll beridin' back 'long Pigeon Roost some time before mawnin'. He done you aheap o' dirt, Anse. "

The prostrate man was listening hard. 

"Anse, I got yore old rifle right here in the house. Ef you could git upthar on the mounting, somewhar's alongside the Pigeon Roost trail, youcould git him shore. He'll be full of licker comin' back. "

And now a seeming marvel was coming to pass, for the caved-in trunk wasrising on the pipestem legs and the shaking fingers were outstretched, reaching for something. 

Shem stepped lightly to a corner of the cabin and brought forth a rifleand began reloading it afresh from a box of shells. 

 * * * * *

A wavering figure crept across the small stump-dotted "dead'ning"--AnseDugmore was upon his errand. He dragged the rifle by the barrel, so thatits butt made a crooked, broken furrow in the new snow like the trail ofa crippled snake. He fell and got up, and fell and rose again. Hecoughed and up the ridge a ranging dog-fox barked back an answer to hiscough. 

From out of the slitted door Shem watched him until the scrub oaks atthe edge of the clearing swallowed him up. Then Shem fastened himself inand made ready to start his flight to the lowlands that very night. 

 * * * * *

Just below the forks of Pigeon Roost Creek the trail that followed itsbanks widened into a track wide enough for wagon wheels. On one side laythe diminished creek, now filmed over with a glaze of young ice. On theother the mountain rose steeply. Fifteen feet up the bluff side a fallendead tree projected its rotted, broken roots, like snaggled teeth, fromthe clayey bank. Behind this tree's trunk, in the snow and half-frozen, half-melted yellow mire, Anse Dugmore was stretched on his face. Thebarrel of the rifle barely showed itself through the interlacing rootends. It pointed downward and northward toward the broad, moonlit placein the road. Its stock was pressed tightly against Anse Dugmore'sfallen-in cheek; the trigger finger of his right hand, fleshless as ajoint of cane, was crooked about the trigger guard. A thin stream ofblood ran from his mouth and dribbled down his chin and coagulated in asticky smear upon the gun stock. His lungs, what was left of them, weredraining away. 

He lay without motion, saving up the last ounce of his life. The coldhad crawled up his legs to his hips; he was dead already from the waistdown. He no longer coughed, only gasped thickly. He knew that he wasabout gone; but he knew, too, that he would last, clear-minded andclear-eyed, until High Sheriff Wyatt Trantham came. His brain wouldlast--and his trigger finger. 

Then he heard him coming. Up the trail sounded the muffled music of apacer's hoofs single-footing through the snow, and after that, almostinstantly Trantham rode out into sight and loomed larger and larger ashe drew steadily near the open place under the bank. He was wavering inthe saddle. He drew nearer and nearer, and as he came out on the widepatch of moonlit snow, he pulled the single-footer down to a walk andhalted him and began fumbling in the right-hand side of the saddlebagsthat draped his horse's shoulder. 

Up in its covert the rifle barrel moved an inch or two, then steadiedand stopped, the bone-sight at its tip resting full on the broad of thedrunken rider's breast. The boney finger moved inward from the triggerguard and closed ever so gently about the touchy, hair-filedtrigger--then waited. 

For the uncertain hand of Trantham, every movement showing plain in thecrystal, hard, white moon, was slowly bringing from under the flap ofthe right-side saddlebag something that was round and smooth and shonewith a yellowish glassy light, like a fat flask filled with spirits. AndAnse Dugmore waited, being minded now to shoot him as he put the bottleto his lips, and so cheat Trantham of his last drink on earth, asTrantham had cheated him of his liberty and his babies--as Trantham hadcheated those babies of the Christmas fixings which the state's fivedollars might have bought. 

He waited, waited----

 * * * * *

This was not the first time the high sheriff had stopped that night onhis homeward ride from the tiny county seat, as his befuddlementproclaimed; but halting there in the open, just past the forks of thePigeon Roost, he was moved by a new idea. He fumbled in the right-handflap of his saddlebags and brought out a toy drum, round and smooth, with shiny yellow sides. A cheap china doll with painted black ringletsand painted blue eyes followed the drum, and then a torn paper bag, fromwhich small pieces of cheap red-and-green dyed candy sifted out betweenthe sheriff's fumbling fingers and fell into the snow. 

Thirty feet away, in the dead leaves matted under the roots of an uptorndead tree, something moved--something moved; and then there was a soundlike a long, deep, gurgling sigh, and another sound like some heavy, lengthy object settling itself down flat upon the snow and the leaves. 

The first faint rustle cleared Trantham's brain of the liquor fumes. Hejammed the toys and the candy back into the saddlebags and jerked hishorse sidewise into the protecting shadow of the bluff, reaching at thesame time to the shoulder holster buckled about his body under theunbuttoned overcoat. For a long minute he listened keenly, the drawnpistol in his hand. There was nothing to hear except his own breathingand the breathing of his horse. 

"Sho! Some old hawg turnin' over in her bed, " he said to the horse, andholstering the pistol he went racking on down Pigeon Roost Creek, withChristmas for Elviry and little Anderson in his saddlebags. 

 * * * * *

When they found Anse Dugmore in his ambush another snow had fallen onhis back and he was slightly more of a skeleton than ever; but the bonyfinger was still crooked about the trigger, the rusted hammer was backat full cock and there was a dried brownish stain on the gun stock. So, from these facts, his finders were moved to conclude that the freedconvict must have bled to death from his lungs before the sheriff everpassed, which they held to be a good thing all round and a lucky thingfor the sheriff. 

VII

TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN

There was a sound, heard in the early hours of a Sunday morning, thatused to bother strangers in our town until they got used to it. Itstarted usually along about half past five or six o'clock and it kept upinterminably--so it seemed to them--a monotonous, jarring thump-thump, thump-thump that was like the far-off beating of African tomtoms; but atbreakfast, when the beaten biscuits came upon the table, throwing off asteamy hot halo of their own goodness, these aliens knew what it wasthat had roused them, and, unless they were dyspeptics by nature, feltamply recompensed for the lost hours of their beauty sleep. 

In these degenerate latter days I believe there is a machine thataccomplishes the same purpose noiselessly by a process of rolling andcrushing, which no doubt is efficacious; but it seems somehow to takethe poetry out of the operation. Old Judge Priest, our circuit judge, and the reigning black deity of his kitchen, Aunt Dilsey Turner, wouldhave naught of it. So long as his digestion survived and her good rightarm held out to endure, there would be real beaten biscuits for thejudge's Sunday morning breakfast. And so, having risen with the dawn ora little later, Aunt Dilsey, wielding a maul-headed tool of whittledwood, would pound the dough with rhythmic strokes until it was asplastic as sculptor's modeling clay and as light as eiderdown, full oftiny hills and hollows, in which small yeasty bubbles rose and spreadand burst like foam globules on the flanks of gentle wavelets. Then, with her master hand, she would roll it thin and cut out the small rounddisks and delicately pink each one with a fork--and then, if you werelistening, you could hear the stove door slam like the smacking of aniron lip. 

On a certain Sunday I have in mind, Judge Priest woke with the firstpremonitory thud from the kitchen, and he was up and dressed in hiswhite linens and out upon the wide front porch while the summer day wasyoung and unblemished. The sun was not up good yet. It made a red glow, like a barn afire, through the treetops looking eastward. Lie-abedblackbirds were still talking over family matters in the maples thatclustered round the house, and in the back yard Judge Priest's big redrooster hoarsely circulated gossip in regard to a certain little brownhen, first crowing out the news loudly and then listening, with his headon one side, while the rooster in the next yard took it up and repeatedit to a rooster living farther down the road, as is the custom amongmale scandalizers the world over. Upon the lawn the little gossamerhammocks that the grass spiders had seamed together overnight werespangled with dew, so that each out-thrown thread was a glitteringrosary and the center of each web a silken, cushioned jewel casket. Likewise each web was outlined in white mist, for the cottonwood treeswere shedding down their podded product so thickly that across openspaces the slanting lines of the drifting fiber looked like snow. Itwould be hot enough after a while, but now the whole world was sweet andfresh and washed clean. 

It impressed Judge Priest so. He lowered his bulk into a rustic chairmade of hickory withes that gave to his weight, and put his thoughtsupon breakfast and the goodness of the day; but presently, as he satthere, he saw something that set a frown between his faded blue eyes. 

He saw, coming down Clay Street, upon the opposite side, an old man--avery feeble old man--who was tall and thin and dressed in somber black. The man was lame--he dragged one leg along with the hitching gait of theparalytic. Traveling with painful slowness, he came on until he reachedthe corner above. Then automatically he turned at right angles and leftthe narrow wooden sidewalk and crossed the dusty road. He passed JudgePriest's, looking neither to the right nor the left, and so kept onuntil he reached the corner below. Still following an invisible path inthe deep-furrowed dust, he crossed again to the other side. Just as hegot there his halt leg seemed to give out altogether and for a minute ortwo he stood holding himself up by a fumbling grip upon the slats of atree box before he went laboriously on, a figure of pain and weakness inthe early sunshine that was now beginning to slant across his path anddapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light. 

This maneuver was inexplicable--a stranger would have puzzled to make itout. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon theother; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brotherover the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles andbalsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the oppositeside of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home, had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to thislone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. Astranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understoodit--he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the yearsthat stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but onthis particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toilinggrim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old. 

Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With aneffort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair andstood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink bald dome of foreheadas though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter, resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door. 

"Breakfus' served, suh!" he said, giving to an announcement touching onfood that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys thesplendid secret. 

"Hey?" asked the judge absently. 

"Breakfus'--hit's on the table waitin', suh, " stated Jeff. "Mizz Polkssent over her houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yorebreakfus'; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses'compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden--specially fur you. "

The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, butin speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always, wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on thatfinal s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implyingthat the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralization. 

Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priestate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads ofsweetness; the young fried chicken was a poem in delicate and flakybrowns; the spoon bread could not have been any better if it had tried;and the beaten biscuits were as light as snowflakes and as ready to melton the tongue; but Judge Priest spoke hardly a word all through themeal. Jeff, going out to the kitchen for the last course, said to AuntDilsey:

"Ole boss-man seem lak he's got somethin' on his mind worryin' him thismawnin'. "

When Jeff returned, with a turn of crisp waffles in one hand and apitcher of cane sirup in the other, he stared in surprise, for thedining room was empty and he could hear his employer creaking down thehall. Jeff just naturally hated to see good hot waffles going to waste. He ate them himself, standing up; and they gave him a zest for hisregular breakfast, which followed in due course of time. 

From the old walnut hatrack, with its white-tipped knobs that stood justinside the front door, Judge Priest picked up a palmleaf fan; and heheld the fan slantwise as a shield for his eyes and his bare headagainst the sun's glare as he went down the porch steps and passed outof his own yard, traversed the empty street and strove with the stubborngate latch of the little house that faced his own. It was a poor-lookinglittle house, and its poorness had extended to its surroundings--as ifpoverty was a contagion that spread. In Judge Priest's yard, now, thegrass, though uncared for, yet grew thick and lush; but here, in thissmall yard, there were bare, shiny spots of earth showing through thegrass--as though the soil itself was out at elbows and the nap worn offits green-velvet coat; but the vines about the porch were thick enoughfor an ambuscade and from behind their green screen came a voice inhospitable recognition. 

"Is that you, judge? Well sir, I'm glad to see you! Come right in; takea seat and sit down and rest yourself. "

The speaker showed himself in the arched opening of the vine barrier--anold man--not quite so old, perhaps, as the judge. He was in hisshirtsleeves. There was a patch upon one of the sleeves. His shoes hadbeen newly shined, but the job was poorly done; the leather showed adulled black upon the toes and a weathered yellow at the sides andheels. As he spoke his voice ran up and down--the voice of a deaf personwho cannot hear his own words clearly, so that he pitches them in afalse key. For added proof of this affliction he held a lean andslightly tremulous hand cupped behind his ear. 

The other hand he extended in greeting as the old judge mounted the stepof the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers thatstood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute ortwo he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborlycalls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy thecommunion of silence together without embarrassment. 

The town clocks struck--first the one on the city hall struck eighttimes sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the countycourthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment, struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once witha big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could curethe courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept itaccording to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased thebell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells, began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had diedaway. 

"Goin' to be good and hot after while, " he said, raising his voice. 

"What say?"

"I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little later on in the day, "repeated Judge Priest. 

"Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there, " assented the host. "Just aminute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find itmiddlin' close in church this morning. She's going, though--runawayhorses wouldn't keep her away from church! I'm not going myself--seemsas though I'm getting more and more out of the church habit herelately. "

Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of thisadmission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of hissecond wife, had been a regular attendant at services--going twice onSundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wifehad been dead going on four years now--or was it five? Time sped so!

The deaf man spoke on:

"So I just thought I'd sit here and try to keep cool and wait for thatLedbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read lastSunday's paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty finepiece on those Northern money devils. It's round here somewhere--I cutit out to keep it. I'd like to have you read it and pass your opinion onit. These young fellows do pretty well, but there's none of them canwrite like the colonel, in my judgment. "

Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him. 

"Ed Tilghman, " he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seemedabsurdly out of place, coming from his round frame, "you and me havelived neighbors together a good while, haven't we? We've been rightacros't the street from one another all this time. It kind of jolts mesometimes when I git to thinkin' how many years it's really been;because we're gittin' along right smartly in years--all us old fellowsare. Ten years from now, say, there won't be so many of us left. " Heglanced sidewise at the lean, firm profile of his friend. "You'reyounger than some of us; but, even so, you ain't exactly what I'd call ayoung man yourself. "

Avoiding the direct, questioning gaze that his companion turned on himat this, the judge reached forward and touched a ripe balsam apple thatdangled in front of him. Instantly it split, showing the gummed redseeds clinging to the inner walls of the sensitive pod. 

"I'm listening to you, judge, " said the deaf man. 

For a moment the old judge waited. There was about him almost an air ofembarrassment. Still considering the ruin of the balsam apple, he spoke, and it was with a sort of hurried anxiety, as though he feared he mightbe checked before he could say what he had to say. 

"Ed, " he said, "I was settin' on my porch a while ago waitin' forbreakfast, and your brother came by. " He shot a quick, apprehensiveglance at his silent auditor. Except for a tautened flickering of themuscles about the mouth, there was no sign that the other had heard him. "Your brother Abner came by, " repeated the judge, "and I set over thereon my porch and watched him pass. Ed, Abner's gittin' mighty feeble! Hejest about kin drag himself along--he's had another stroke lately, theytell me. He had to hold on to that there treebox down yonder, steadyin'himself after he crossed back over to this side. Lord knows what he wasdoin' draggin' down-town on a Sunday mornin'--force of habit, I reckin. Anyway he certainly did look older and more poorly than ever I saw himbefore. He's a failin' man if I'm any judge. Do you hear me plain?" heasked. 

"I hear you, " said his neighbor in a curiously flat voice. It wasTilghman's turn to avoid the glances of his friend. He stared straightahead of him through a rift in the vines. 

"Well, then, " went on Judge Priest, "here's what I've got to say to you, Ed Tilghman. You know as well as I do that I've never pried into yourprivate affairs, and it goes mightily against the grain for me to bedoin' so now; but, Ed, when I think of how old we're all gittin' to be, and when the Camp meets and I see you settin' there side by side almost, and yet never seemin' to see each other--and this mornin' when I sawAbner pass, lookin' so gaunt and sick--and it sech a sweet, ca'm mornin'too, and everything so quiet and peaceful----" He broke off and startedanew. "I don't seem to know exactly how to put my thoughts intowords--and puttin' things into words is supposed to be my trade too. Anyway I couldn't go to Abner. He's not my neighbor and you are; andbesides, you're the youngest of the two. So--so I came over here to you. Ed, I'd like mightily to take some word from you to your brother Abner. I'd like to do it the best in the world! Can't I go to him with amessage from you--today? Tomorrow might be too late!"

He laid one of his pudgy hands on the bony knee of the deaf man; but thehand slipped away as Tilghman stood up. 

"Judge Priest, " said Tilghman, looking down at him, "I've listened towhat you've had to say; and I didn't stop you, because you are my friendand I know you mean well by it. Besides, you're my guest, under my ownroof. " He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch. Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him, his face being still set and his voice flat. "What's between me andmy--what's between me and that man you just named always will be betweenus. He's satisfied to let things go on as they are. I'm satisfied to letthem go on. It's in our breed, I guess. Words--just words--wouldn't helpmend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, andneither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we bothlive. I'd just as soon you never brought this--this subject up again. Ifyou went to him I presume he'd tell you the same thing. Let it be, JudgePriest--it's past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty yearsnearly. We'll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, JudgePriest; but let it be--let it be!"

There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. Hechecked his walk and called in at a shuttered window. 

"Liddie, " he said in his natural up-and-down voice, "before you put offfor church, couldn't you mix up a couple of lemonades or something?Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me. "

"No, " said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, "I've got to be gittin' backbefore the sun's up too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile beshore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night, "he added. 

"I'll be there, " said Tilghman. "And I'll try to find that piece ofColonel Watterson's and send it over to you. I'd like mightily for youto read it. "

He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied handfumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walkand out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again. All those little muscles in his jowls were jumping. 

Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length frombeneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and theregroups of children--the little girls in prim and starchy white, thelittle boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; andall of them were moving toward a common center--Sunday school. Twiceagain that day would the street show life--a little later when grown-upswent their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, whenyoung people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins, would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sundayinterchange of special dainties between neighbors amounted in our townto a ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the cool of theevening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took Sundaynaps. 

With his fan, Judge Priest made an angry sawing motion in the air, asthough trying to fend off something disagreeable--a memory, perhaps, orit might have been only a persistent midge. There were plenty of gnatsand midges about, for by now--even so soon--the dew was dried. Theleaves of the silver poplars were turning their white under sides uplike countless frog bellies, and the long, podded pendants of theInjun-cigar trees hung dangling and still. It would be a hot day, sureenough; already the judge felt wilted and worn out. 

In our town we had our tragedies that endured for years and, in thesmall-town way, finally became institutions. There was the case of theBurnleys. For thirty-odd years old Major Burnley lived on one side ofhis house and his wife lived on the other, neither of them ever crossingan imaginary dividing line that ran down the middle of the hall, havingfor their medium of intercourse all that time a lean, spinster daughter, in whose gray and barren life churchwork and these strange home dutiestook the place that Nature had intended to be filled by a husband and bybabies and grandbabies. 

There was crazy Saul Vance, in his garb of a fantastic scarecrow, whowas forever starting somewhere and never going there--because, as sureas he came to a place where two roads crossed, he could not make up hismind which turn to take. In his youth a girl had jilted him, or a bankhad failed on him, or a horse had kicked him in the head--or maybe itwas all three of these things that had addled his poor brains. Anyhow hewent his pitiable, aimless way for years, taunted daily by small boyswho were more cruel than jungle beasts. How he lived nobody knew, butwhen he died some of the men who as boys had jeered him turned out to behis volunteer pallbearers. 

There was Mr. H. Jackman--Brother Jackman to all the town--who had beenour leading hatter once and rich besides, and in the days of hisaffluence had given the Baptist church its bells. In his old age, whenhe was dog-poor, he lived on charity, only it was not known by thatword, which is at once the sweetest and bitterest word in our tongue;for Brother Jackman, always primped, always plump and well clad, wouldgo through the market to take his pick of what was there, and to theRichland House bar for his toddies, and to Felsburg Brothers for newgarments when his old ones wore shabby--and yet never paid a cent foranything; a kindly conspiracy on the part of the whole town enabling himto maintain his self-respect to the last. Strangers in our town used totake him for a retired banker--that's a fact!

And there was old man Stackpole, who had killed his man--had killed himin fair fight and had been acquitted--and yet walked quiet back streetsat all hours, a gray, silent shadow, and never slept except with abright light burning in his room. 

The tragedy of Mr. Edward Tilghman, though, and of Captain Abner G. Tilghman, his elder brother, was both a tragedy and a mystery--thebiggest tragedy and the deepest mystery our town had ever known or everwould know probably. All that anybody knew for certain was that forupward of fifty years neither of them had spoken to the other, nor bydeed or look had given heed to the other. As boys, back in sixty-one, they had gone out together. Side by side, each with his arm over theother's shoulder, they had stood up with a hundred others to be sworninto the service of the Confederate States of America; and on themorning they went away Miss Sally May Ghoulson had given the olderbrother her silk scarf off her shoulders to wear for a sash. Both thebrothers had liked her; but by this public act she made it plain whichof them was her choice. 

Then the company had marched off to the camp on the Tennessee border, where the new troops were drilling; and as they marched some watcherswept and others cheered--but the cheering predominated, for it was to beonly a sort of picnic anyhow--so everybody agreed. As the orators--whomainly stayed behind--had pointed out, the Northern people would notfight. And even if they should fight could not one Southerner whip fourYankees? Certainly he could; any fool knew that much. In a month or twomonths, or at most three months, they would all be tramping home again, covered with glory and the spoils of war, and then--this by commonreport and understanding--Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghmanwould be married, with a big church wedding. 

The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought, and it was not a ninety-daypicnic after all. It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it was over, after four years and a month, Miss Sally May Ghoulson and Abner Tilghmandid not marry. It was just before the battle of Chickamauga when theother men in the company first noticed that the two Tilghmans had becomeas strangers, and worse than strangers, to each other. They quitspeaking to each other then and there, and to any man's knowledge theynever spoke again. They served the war out, Abner rising just beforethe end to a captaincy, Edward serving always as a private in the ranks. In a dour, grim silence they took the fortunes of those last hard, hopeless days and after the surrender down in Mississippi they came backwith the limping handful that was left of the company; and in age theywere all boys still--but in experience, men, and in suffering, grandsires. 

Two months after they got back Miss Sally May Ghoulson was married toEdward, the younger brother. Within a year she died, and after a decentperiod of mourning Edward married a second time--only to be widowedagain after many years. His second wife bore him children and theydied--all except one, a daughter, who grew up and married badly; andafter her mother's death she came back to live with her deaf father andminister to him. As for Captain Abner Tilghman, he never married--never, so far as the watching eyes of the town might tell, looked with favorupon another woman. And he never spoke to his brother or to any of hisbrother's family--or his brother to him. 

With years the wall of silence they had builded up between them turnedto ice and the ice to stone. They lived on the same street, but neverdid Edward enter Captain Abner's bank, never did Captain Abner passEdward's house--always he crossed over to the opposite side. Theybelonged to the same Veterans' Camp--indeed there was only the one forthem to belong to; they voted the same ticket--straight Democratic; andin the same church, the old Independent Presbyterian, they worshiped thesame God by the same creed, the older brother being an elder and theyounger a plain member--and yet never crossed looks. 

The town had come to accept this dumb and bitter feud as unchangeableand eternal; in time people ceased even to wonder what its cause hadbeen, and in all the long years only one man had tried, before now, toheal it up. When old Doctor Henrickson died, a young and ardentclergyman, fresh from the Virginia theological school, came out to takethe vacant pulpit; and he, being filled with a high sense of his holycalling, thought it shameful that such a thing should be in thecongregation. He went to see Captain Tilghman about it. He never wentbut that once. Afterward it came out that Captain Tilghman hadthreatened to walk out of church and never darken its doors again if theminister ever dared to mention his brother's name in his presence. Sothe young minister sorrowed, but obeyed, for the captain was rich and agenerous giver to the church. 

And he had grown richer with the years, and as he grew richer hisbrother grew poorer--another man owned the drug store where EdwardTilghman had failed. They had grown from young to middle-aged men andfrom middle-aged men to old, infirm men; and first the grace of youthand then the solidness of maturity had gone out of them and thegnarliness of age had come upon them; one was halt of step and the otherwas dull of ear; and the town through half a century of schooling hadaccustomed itself to the situation and took it as a matter of course. Soit was and so it always would be--a tragedy and a mystery. It had notbeen of any use when the minister interfered and it was of no use now. Judge Priest, with the gesture of a man who is beaten, dropped the fanon the porch floor, went into his darkened sitting room, stretchedhimself wearily on a creaking horsehide sofa and called out to Jeff tomake him a mild toddy--one with plenty of ice in it. 

 * * * * *

On this same Sunday--or, anyhow, I like to fancy it was on this sameSunday--at a point distant approximately nine hundred and seventy milesin a northeasterly direction from Judge Priest's town, Corporal JacobSpeck, late of Sigel's command, sat at the kitchen window of thecombined Speck and Engel apartment on East Eighty-fifth Street in theBorough of Manhattan, New York. He was in his shirtsleeves; his tenderfeet were incased in a pair of red-and-green carpet slippers. In theangle of his left arm he held his youngest grandchild, aged one and ahalf years, while his right hand carefully poised a china pipe, with abowl like an egg-cup and a stem like a fishpole. The corporal's blueHanoverian eyes, behind their thick-lensed glasses, were fixed upon acomprehensive vista of East Eighty-fifth Street back yards andclothespoles and fire escapes; but his thoughts were very muchelsewhere. 

Reared back there at seeming ease, the corporal none the less was nothappy in his mind. It was not that he so much minded being left at hometo mind the youngest baby while the rest of the family spent theafternoon amid the Teutonic splendors of Smeltzer's Harlem River Casino, with its acres of gravel walks and its whitewashed tree trunks, itsstraggly flower beds and its high-collared beers. He was used to thatsort of thing. Since a plague of multiplying infirmities of the bodyhad driven him out of his job in the tax office, the corporal had notdone much except nurse the babies that occurred in the Speck-Engelestablishment with such unerring regularity. Sometimes, it is true, hedid slip down to the corner for maybe zwei glasses of beer and a game ofpinocle; but then, likely as not, there would come inopportunely atowheaded descendant to tell him Mommer needed him back at the flatright away to mind the baby while she went marketing or to the movies. 

He could endure that--he had to. What riled Corporal Jacob Speck on thiswarm and sunny Sunday was a realization that he was not doing his shareat making the history of the period. The week before had befallen thefiftieth anniversary of the marching away of his old regiment to thefront; there had been articles in the daily papers about it. Also, inpatriotic commemoration of the great event there had been a parade ofthe wrinkled survivors--ninety-odd of them--following their tattered andfaded battle flag down Fifth Avenue past apathetic crowds, nine-tenthsof whom had been born since the war--in foreign lands mainly; and atleast half, if one might judge by their looks, did not know what theparading was all about, and did not particularly care either. 

The corporal had not participated in the march of the veterans; he hadnot even attended the banquet that followed it. True, the youngestgrandchild was at the moment cutting one of her largest jaw teeth and sohad required, for the time, an extraordinary and special amount ofminding; but the young lady's dental difficulty was not the sole reasonfor his absence. Three weeks earlier the corporal had taken part inDecoration Day, and certainly one parade a month was ample strain upon apair of legs such as he owned. He had returned home with his game legbehaving more gamely then usual and with his sound one full of new andpainful kinks. Also, in honor of the occasion he had committed the errorof wearing a pair of stiff and inflexible new shoes; wherefore he hadworn his carpet slippers ever since. 

Missing the fiftieth anniversary was not the main point with thecorporal--that was merely the fortune of war, to be accepted withfortitude and with no more than a proper and natural amount of grumblingby one who had been a good soldier and was now a good citizen; but fordays before the event, and daily ever since, divers members of the oldregiment had been writing pieces to the papers--the German papers andthe English-printing papers too--long pieces, telling of the trip toWashington, and then on into Virginia and Tennessee, speaking of thiscampaign and that and this battle and that. And because there was justnow a passing wave of interest in Civil War matters, the papers hadprinted these contributions, thereby reflecting much glory on thewriters thereof. But Corporal Speck, reading these things, had marveleddeeply that sane men should have such disgustingly bad memories; for hisown recollection of these stirring and epochal events differed mostwidely from the reminiscent narration of each misguided chronicler. 

It was, indeed, a shameful thing that the most important occurrences ofthe whole war should be so shockingly mangled and mishandled in theretelling. They were so grievously wrong, those other veterans, and hewas so absolutely right. He was always right in these matters. Only thenight before, during a merciful respite from his nursing duties, hehad, in Otto Wittenpen's back barroom, spoken across the rim of a tallstein with some bitterness of certain especially grievous misstatementsof plain fact on the part of certain faulty-minded comrades. In replyOtto had said, in a rather sneering tone the corporal thought:

"Say, then, Jacob, why don't you yourself write a piece to the papertelling about this regiment of yours--the way it was?"

"I will. Tomorrow I will do so without fail, " he had said, the ambitionof authorship suddenly stirring within him. Now, however, as he sat atthe kitchen window, he gloomed in his disappointment, for he had triedand he knew he had not the gift of the written line. A good soldier hehad been--yes, none better--and a good citizen, and in his day a capableand painstaking doorkeeper in the tax office; but he could not write hisown story. That morning, when the youngest grandchild slept and hisdaughter and his daughter's husband and the brood of his oldergrandchildren were all at the Lutheran church over in the next block, hesat himself down to compose his article to the paper; but the wordswould not come--or, at least, after the first line or two they would notcome. 

The mental pictures of those stirring great days when he marched off onhis two good legs--both good legs then--to fight for the country whoselanguage he could not yet speak was there in bright and living colors;but the sorry part of it was he could not clothe them in language. Inthe trash box under the sink a dozen crumpled sheets of paper testifiedto his failure, and now, alone with the youngest Miss Engel, he broodedover it and got low in his mind and let his pipe go smack out. And rightthen and there, with absolutely no warning at all, there came to him, asyou might say from the clear sky, a great idea--an idea so magnificentthat he almost dropped the youngest Miss Engel off his lap at thesplendid shock of it. 

With solicitude he glanced down at the small, moist, pink, lumpy bundleof prickly heat and sore gums. Despite the sudden jostle the young ladyslept steadily on. Very carefully he laid his pipe aside and verycarefully he got upon his feet, jouncing his charge soothingly up anddown, and with deftness he committed her small person to the crib thatstood handily by. She stirred fretfully, but did not wake. The corporalsteered his gimpy leg and his rheumatic one out of the kitchen, whichwas white with scouring and as clean as a new pin, into the rearmost andsmallest of the three sleeping rooms that mainly made up the Speck-Engelapartment. 

The bed, whereon of nights Corporal Speck reposed with a bucking broncoof an eight-year-old grandson for a bedmate, was jammed close againstthe plastering, under the one small window set diagonally in a jog inthe wall, and opening out upon an airshaft, like a chimney. Time hadbeen when the corporal had a room and a bed all his own; that was beforethe family began to grow so fast in its second generation and while hestill held a place of lucrative employment at the tax office. 

As he got down upon his knees beside the bed the old man uttered alittle groan of discomfort. He felt about in the space underneath anddrew out a small tin trunk, rusted on its corners and dented in itssides. He made a laborious selection of keys from a key-ring he got outof his pocket, unlocked the trunk and lifted out a heavy top tray. Thetray contained, among other things, such treasures as his naturalizationpapers, his pension papers, a photograph of his dead wife, and a smallbethumbed passbook of the East Side Germania Savings Bank. Underneathwas a black fatigue hat with a gold cord round its crown, a neatlyfolded blue uniform coat, with the G. A. R. Bronze showing in itsuppermost lapel, and below that, in turn, the suit of neat black thecorporal wore on high state occasions and would one day wear to beburied in. Pawing and digging, he worked his hands to the very bottom, and then, with a little grunt, he heaved out the thing he wanted--theone trophy, except a stiffened kneecap and an honorable record, this oldman had brought home from the South. It was a captured Confederateknapsack, flattened and flabby. Its leather was dry-rotted with age andthe brass C. S. A. On the outer flap was gangrened and sunken in; theflap curled up stiffly, like an old shoe sole. 

The crooked old fingers undid a buckle fastening and from the musty andodorous interior of the knapsack withdrew a letter, in a queer-lookingyellowed envelope, with a queer-looking stamp upon the upper right-handcorner and a faint superscription upon its face. The three sheets ofpaper he slid out of the envelope were too old even to rustle, but theclose writing upon them in a brownish, faded ink was still plainly to bemade out. 

Corporal Speck replaced the knapsack in its place at the very bottom, put the tray back in its place, closed the trunk and locked it andshoved it under the bed. The trunk resisted slightly and he lost onecarpet slipper and considerable breath in the struggle. Limping back tothe kitchen and seeing that little Miss Engel still slumbered, he easedhis frame into a chair and composed himself to literary composition, notin the least disturbed by the shouts of roistering sidewalk comediansthat filtered up to him from down below in front of the house, or by thedistant clatter of intermittent traffic over the cobbly spine of SecondAvenue, half a block away. For some time he wrote, with a most scratchypen; and this is what he wrote:

 "TO THE EDITOR OF THE SUN, CITY. 

 "_Dear Sir:_ The undersigned would state that he served two years and nine months--until wounded in action--in the Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York Infantry, and has been much interested to see what other comrades wrote for the papers regarding same in connection with the Rebellion War of North and South respectively. I would state that during the battle of Chickamauga I was for a while lying near by to a Confederate soldier--name unknown--who was dying on account of a wound in the chest. By his request I gave him a drink of water from my canteen, he dying shortly thereafter. Being myself wounded--right knee shattered by a Minie ball--I was removed to a field hospital; but before doing so I brought away this man's knapsack for a keepsake of the occasion. Some years later I found in said knapsack a letter, which previous to then was overlooked by me. I inclose herewith a copy of said letter, which it may be interesting for reading purposes by surviving comrades. 

 "Respectfully yours, "JACOB SPECK, "Late Corporal L Company, "Fighting Two Hundred and Tenth New York, U. S. A. "

With deliberation and squeaky emphasis the pen progressed slowly acrossthe paper, while the corporal, with his left hand, held flat the deadman's ancient letter before him, intent on copying it. Hard wordspuzzled him and long words daunted him, and he was making a long job ofit when there were steps in the hall without. There entered breezilyMiss Hortense Engel, who was the oldest of all the multiplying Engels, pretty beyond question and every inch American, having the gift ofwearing Lower Sixth Avenue stock designs in a way to make them seemUpper Fifth Avenue models. Miss Engel's face was pleasantly flushed; shehad just parted lingeringly from her steady company, whose name was Mr. Lawrence J. McLaughlin, in the lower hallway, which is the trystingplace and courting place of tenement-dwelling sweethearts, and now shehad come to make ready the family's cold Sunday night tea. At sight ofher the corporal had another inspiration--his second within the hour. His brow smoothed and he fetched a sigh of relief. 

"'Lo, grosspops!" she said. "How's every little thing? The kiddo allright?"

She unpinned a Sunday hat that was plumed like a hearse and slipped ona long apron that covered her from Robespierre bib to hobble hem. 

"Girl, " said her grandfather, "would you make tomorrow for me at theoffice a copy of this letter on the typewriter machine?"

He spoke in German and she answered in New-Yorkese, while her nimblefingers wrestled with the task of back-buttoning her apron. 

"Sure thing! It won't take hardly a minute to rattle that off. Funny-looking old thing!" she went on, taking up the creased and fadedoriginal. "Who wrote it? And whatcher goin' to do with it, grosspops?"

"That, " he told her, "is mine own business! It is for you, please, tomake the copy and bring both to me tomorrow, the letter and also thecopy. "

So on Monday morning, when the rush of taking dictation at the office ofthe Great American Hosiery Company, in Broome Street, was well abated, the competent Miss Hortense copied the letter, and that same evening hergrandfather mailed it to the Sun, accompanied by his own introduction. The Sun straightway printed it without change and--what was stillbetter--with the sender's name spelled out in capital letters; and thatnight, at the place down by the corner, Corporal Jacob Speck was aprophet not without honor in his own country--much honor, in fact, accrued. 

If you have read certain other stories of mine you may remember that, upon a memorable occasion, Judge William Pitman Priest made a trip toNew York and while there had dealings with a Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee, apromoter of gas and other hot-air propositions; and that during thecourse of his stay in the metropolis he made the acquaintance of oneMalley, a Sun reporter. This had happened some years back, but Malleywas still on the staff of the Sun. It happened also that, going throughthe paper to clip out and measure up his own space, Malley came upon thecorporal's contribution. Glancing over it idly, he caught the name, twice or thrice repeated, of the town where Judge Priest lived. So hebundled together a couple of copies and sent them South with a shortletter; and therefore it came about in due season, through the goodoffices of the United States Post-office Department, that theseenclosures reached the judge on a showery afternoon as he loafed uponhis wide front porch, waiting for his supper. 

First, he read Malley's letter and was glad to hear from Malley. With aquickened interest he ran a plump thumb under the wrappings of the twoclose-rolled papers, opened out one of them at page ten and read theopening statement of Corporal Jacob Speck, for whom instantly the judgeconceived a long-distance fondness. Next he came to the letter that MissHortense Engel had so accurately transcribed, and at the very firstwords of it he sat up straighter, with a surprised and gratified littlegrunt; for he had known them both--the writer of that letter and itsrecipient. One still lived in his memory as a red-haired girl with apert, malicious face, and the other as a stripling youth in a raggedgray uniform. And he had known most of those whose names studded theprinted lines so thickly. Indeed, some of them he still knew--only nowthey were old men and old women--faded, wrinkled bucks and belles of afar-distant day. 

As he read the first words it came back to the judge, almost with thejolting emphasis of a new and fresh sensation, that in the days of hisown youth he had never liked the girl who wrote that letter or the manwho received it. But she was dead this many and many a year--why, shemust have died soon after she wrote this very letter--the date provedthat--and he, the man, had fallen at Chickamauga, taking his death infront like a soldier; and surely that settled everything and made allthings right! But the letter--that was the main thing. His old blue eyesskipped nimbly behind the glasses that saddled the tip of his plump pinknose, and the old judge read it--just such a letter as he himself hadreceived many a time; just such a wartime letter as uncounted thousandsof soldiers North and South received from their sweethearts and read andreread by the light of flickering campfires and carried afterward intheir knapsacks through weary miles of marching. 

It was crammed with the small-town gossip of a small town that was butlittle more than a memory now--telling how, because he would notvolunteer, a hapless youth had been waylaid by a dozen high-spiritedgirls and overpowered, and dressed in a woman's shawl and a woman'spoke bonnet, so that he left town with his shame between two suns;how, since the Yankees had come, sundry faithless females werefriendly--actually friendly, this being underscored--with the morepersonable of the young Yankee officers; how half the town was inmourning for a son or brother dead or wounded; how a new and sweetlysentimental song, called Rosalie, the Prairie Flower, was being muchsung at the time--and had it reached the army yet? how old Mrs. Hobbshad been exiled to Canada for seditious acts and language and haddeparted northward between two files of bluecoats, reviling the Yankeeswith an unbitted tongue at every step; how So-and-So had died or marriedor gone refugeeing below the enemy's line into safely Southernterritory; how this thing had happened and that thing had not. 

The old judge read on and on, catching gladly at names that kindled atenderly warm glow of half-forgotten memories in his soul, until he cameto the last paragraph of all; and then, as he comprehended the intent ofit in all its barbed and venomed malice, he stood suddenly erect, withthe outspread paper shaking in his hard grip. For now, coming back tohim by so strange a way across fifty years of silence andmisunderstanding, he read there the answer to the town's oldest, biggesttragedy and knew what it was that all this time had festered, likeburied thorns, in the flesh of those two men, his comrades and friends. He dropped the paper, and up and down the wide, empty porch he stumpedon his short stout legs, shaking with the shock of revelation and withindignation and pity for the blind and bitter uselessness of it all. 

"Ah hah!" he said to himself over and over again understandingly. "Ahhah!" And then: "Next to a mean man, a mean woman is the meanest thingin this whole created world, I reckin. I ain't sure but what she's themeanest of the two. And to think of what them two did between 'em--shewritin' that hellish black lyin' tale to 'Lonzo Pike and he puttin' offhotfoot to Abner Tilghman to poison his mind with it and set him like aflint against his own flesh and blood! And wasn't it jest like Lon Piketo go and git himself killed the next day after he got that thereletter! And wasn't it jest like her to up and die before the truth couldbe brought home to her! And wasn't it like them two stubborn, set, contrary, close-mouthed Tilghman boys to go 'long through all theseyears, without neither one of 'em ever offerin' to make or take anexplanation!" His tone changed. "Oh, ain't it been a pitiful thing! Andall so useless! But--oh, thank the Lord--it ain't too late to mend itpart way anyhow! Thank God, it ain't too late for that!"

Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with itcrumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound forthe little cottage snuggled in its vine ambush across Clay Street beforea better and a bigger inspiration caught up with him and halted himmidway of an onward stride. 

Was not this the second Friday in the month? It certainly was. And wouldnot the Camp be meeting tonight in regular semimonthly session atKamleiter's Hall? It certainly would. For just a moment Judge Priestconsidered the proposition. He slapped his linen clad flank gleefully, and his round old face, which had been knotted with resolution, broke upinto a wrinkly, ample smile; he spun on his heel and hurried back intothe house and to the telephone in the hall. For half an hour, more orless, Judge Priest was busy at that telephone, calling in a high, excited voice, first for one number and then for another. While he didthis his supper grew cold on the table, and in the dining room Jeff, thewhite-clad, fidgeted and out in the kitchen Aunt Dilsey, the turbaned, fumed--but, at Kamleiter's Hall that night at eight, Judge Priest'sindustry was in abundant fulness rewarded. 

Once upon a time Gideon K. Irons Camp claimed a full two hundredmembers, but that had been when it was first organized. Now there werein good standing less than twenty. Of these twenty, fifteen sat on thehard wooden chairs when Judge Priest rapped with his metal spectaclecase for order, and that fifteen meant all who could travel out atnights. Doctor Lake was there, and Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, the faithfuland inevitable. It was the biggest turnout the Camp had had in a year. 

Far over on one side, cramped down in a chair, was Captain AbnerTilghman, feeble and worn-looking. His buggy horse stood hitched by thecurb downstairs. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby had gone to his house for him andon the plea of business of vital moment had made him come with him. Almost directly across the middle aisle on the other side sat Mr. EdwardTilghman. Nobody had to go for him. He always came to a regular meetingof the Camp, even though he heard the proceedings only in broken bits. 

The adjutant called the roll and those present answered, each one to hisname; and mainly the voices sounded bent and sagged, like the bodies oftheir owners. A keen onlooker might have noticed a sort of tremulous, joyous impatience, which filled all save two of these old, gray men, pushing the preliminaries forward with uncommon speed. They fidgeted intheir places. 

Presently Judge Priest cleared his throat of a persistent huskiness andstood up. 

"Before we proceed to the regular routine, " he piped, "I desire topresent a certain matter to a couple of our members. " He came down offthe little platform, where the flags were draped, with a step that wasalmost light, and into Captain Abner Tilghman's hand he put a copy of acity paper, turned and folded at a certain place, where a column ofprinted matter was scored about with heavy pencil bracketings. "Cap'n, "he said, "as a personal favor to me, suh, would you please read thishere article?--the one that's marked"--he pointed with his finger--"notaloud--read it to yourself, please. "

It was characteristic of the paralytic to say nothing. Without a word headjusted his glasses and without a word he began to read. So instantlyintent was he that he did not see what followed next--and that was JudgePriest crossing over to Mr. Edward Tilghman's side with another copy ofa paper in his hand. 

"Ed, " he bade him, "read this here article, won't you? Read it clearthrough to the end--it might interest you maybe. " The deaf man looked upat him wonderingly, but took the paper in his slightly palsied hand andbent his head close above the printed sheet. 

Judge Priest stood in the middle aisle, making no move to go back to hisown place. He watched the two silent readers. All the others watchedthem too. They read on, making slow progress, for the light was poor andtheir eyes were poor. And the watchers could hardly contain themselves;they could hardly wait. Sergeant Jimmy Bagby kept bobbing up and downlike a pudgy jack-in-the-box that is slightly stiff in its joints. Asmall, restrained rustle of bodies accompanied the rustle of the foldednewspapers held in shaky hands. 

Unconscious of all scrutiny, the brothers read on. Perhaps because hehad started first--perhaps because his glasses were the more expensiveand presumably therefore the more helpful--Captain Abner Tilghman cameto the concluding paragraph first. He read it through--and then JudgePriest turned his head away, for a moment almost regretting he hadchosen so public a place for this thing. 

He looked back again in time to see Captain Abner getting upon his feet. Dragging his dead leg behind him, the paralytic crossed the bare floorto where his brother's gray head was bent to his task. And at his sidehe halted, making no sound or sign, but only waiting. He waited there, trembling all over, until the sitter came to the end of the column andread what was there--and lifted a face all glorified with a perfectunderstanding. 

"Eddie!" said the older man--"Eddie!" He uttered a name of boyhoodaffection that none there had heard uttered for fifty years nearly; andit was as though a stone had been rolled away from a tomb--as though outof the grave of a dead past a voice had been resurrected. "Eddie!" hesaid a third time, pleadingly, abjectly, humbly, craving forforgiveness. 

"Brother Abner!" said the other man. "Oh, Brother Abner!" he said--andthat was all he did say--all he had need to say, for he was on his feetnow, reaching out with wide-spread, shaking arms. 

Sergeant Jimmy Bagby tried to start a cheer, but could not make it comeout of his throat--only a clicking, squeaking kind of sound came. As acheer it was a miserable failure. 

Side by side, each with his inner arm tight gripped about the other, thebrothers, bareheaded, turned their backs upon their friends and wentaway. Slowly they passed out through the doorway into the darkness ofthe stair landing, and the members of the Gideon K. Irons Camp were allup on their feet. 

"Mind that top step, Abner!" they heard the younger man say. "Wait! I'llhelp you down. "

That was all that was heard, except a scuffling sound of uncertainlyplaced feet, growing fainter and fainter as the two brothers passed downthe long stairs of Kamleiter's Hall and out into the night--that wasall, unless you would care to take cognizance of a subdued little chorussuch as might be produced by twelve or thirteen elderly men snuffling ina large bare room. As commandant of the Camp it was fitting, perhaps, that Judge Priest should speak first. 

"The trouble with this here Camp is jest this, " he said: "it's got a lotof snifflin' old fools in it that don't know no better than to bust outcryin' when they oughter be happy!" And then, as if to show how deeplyhe felt the shame of such weakness on the part of others, Judge Priestblew his nose with great violence, and for a space of minutesindustriously mopped at his indignant eyes with an enormous pockethandkerchief. 

 * * * * *

In accordance with a rule, Jeff Poindexter waited up for his employer. Jeff expected him by nine-thirty at the latest; but it was actuallygetting along toward ten-thirty before Jeff, who had been dozing lightlyin the dim-lit hall, oblivious to the fanged attentions of some largemosquitoes, roused suddenly as he heard the sound of a rambling butfamiliar step clunking along the wooden sidewalk of Clay Street. Thelatch on the front gate clicked, and as Jeff poked his nose out of thefront door he heard, down the aisle of trees that bordered the gravelwalk, the voice of his master uplifted in solitary song. 

In the matter of song the judge had a peculiarity. It made no differencewhat the words might be or the theme--he sang every song and all songsto a fine, high, tuneless little tune of his own. At this moment JudgePriest, as Jeff gathered, was showing a wide range of selection. Onesecond he was announcing that his name it was Joe Bowers and he was allthe way from Pike, and the next he was stating, for the benefit of allwho might care to hear these details, that they--presumably certainhorses--were bound to run all night--bound to run all day; so you couldbet on the bobtailed nag and he'd bet on the bay. Nearer to the porchsteps it boastingly transpired that somebody had jumped aboard thetelegraf and steered her by the triggers, whereat the lightnin' flew and'lectrified and killed ten thousand niggers! But even so general acatastrophe could not weigh down the singer's spirits. As he put afumbling foot upon the lowermost step of the porch, he threw his headfar back and shrilly issued the following blanket invitation to ladiesresident in a far-away district:

 _Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight? Won't you come out tonight? Oh, Bowery gals, won't you come out tonight, And dance by the light of the moon? I danced with a gal with a hole in her stockin'; And her heel it kep' a-rockin'--kep' a-rockin'! She was the purtiest gal in the room!_

Jeff pulled the front door wide open. The song stopped and Judge Prieststood in the opening, teetering a little on his heels. His face was alla blushing pinky glow. 

"Evenin', jedge!" greeted Jeff. "You're late, suh!"

"Jeff, " said Judge Priest slowly, "it's a beautiful evenin'. "

Amazed, Jeff stared at him. As a matter of fact, the drizzle of theafternoon had changed, soon after dark, to a steady downpour. Thejudge's limpened hat brim dripped raindrops and his shoulders weresopping wet, but Jeff had yet to knowingly and wilfully contradict aprominent white citizen. 

"Yas, suh!" he said, half affirmatively, half questioningly. "Is it?"

"It is so!" said Judge Priest. "Every star in the sky shines like adiamond! Jeff, it's the most beautiful evenin' I ever remember!"

VIII

FISHHEAD

It goes past the powers of my pen to try to describe Reelfoot Lake foryou so that you, reading this, will get the picture of it in your mindas I have it in mine. For Reelfoot Lake is like no other lake that Iknow anything about. It is an afterthought of Creation. 

The rest of this continent was made and had dried in the sun forthousands of years--for millions of years for all I know--beforeReelfoot came to be. It's the newest big thing in nature on thishemisphere probably, for it was formed by the great earthquake of 1811, just a little more than a hundred years ago. That earthquake of 1811surely altered the face of the earth on the then far frontier of thiscountry. It changed the course of rivers, it converted hills into whatare now the sunk lands of three states, and it turned the solid groundto jelly and made it roll in waves like the sea. And in the midst ofthe retching of the land and the vomiting of the waters it depressed tovarying depths a section of the earth crust sixty miles long, taking itdown--trees, hills, hollows and all; and a crack broke through to theMississippi River so that for three days the river ran up stream, filling the hole. 

The result was the largest lake south of the Ohio, lying mostly inTennessee, but extending up across what is now the Kentucky line, andtaking its name from a fancied resemblance in its outline to the splay, reeled foot of a cornfield negro. Niggerwool Swamp, not so far away, mayhave got its name from the same man who christened Reelfoot; at least soit sounds. 

Reelfoot is, and has always been, a lake of mystery. In places it isbottomless. Other places the skeletons of the cypress trees that wentdown when the earth sank still stand upright, so that if the sun shinesfrom the right quarter and the water is less muddy than common, a manpeering face downward into its depths sees, or thinks he sees, downbelow him the bare top-limbs upstretching like drowned men's fingers, all coated with the mud of years and bandaged with pennons of the greenlake slime. In still other places the lake is shallow for longstretches, no deeper than breast deep to a man, but dangerous because ofthe weed growths and the sunken drifts which entangle a swimmer's limbs. Its banks are mainly mud, its waters are muddied too, being a richcoffee color in the spring and a copperish yellow in the summer, and thetrees along its shore are mud colored clear up to their lower limbsafter the spring floods, when the dried sediment covers their trunkswith a thick, scrofulous-looking coat. 

There are stretches of unbroken woodland around it and slashes where thecypress knees rise countlessly like headstones and footstones for thedead snags that rot in the soft ooze. There are deadenings with thelowland corn growing high and rank below and the bleached, fire-blackened girdled trees rising above, barren of leaf and limb. There are long, dismal flats where in the spring the clotted frog-spawnclings like patches of white mucus among the weed stalks and at nightthe turtles crawl out to lay clutches of perfectly round, white eggswith tough, rubbery shells in the sand. There are bayous leading off tonowhere and sloughs that wind aimlessly, like great, blind worms, tofinally join the big river that rolls its semi-liquid torrents a fewmiles to the westward. 

So Reelfoot lies there, flat in the bottoms, freezing lightly in thewinter, steaming torridly in the summer, swollen in the spring when thewoods have turned a vivid green and the buffalo gnats by the million andthe billion fill the flooded hollows with their pestilential buzzing, and in the fall ringed about gloriously with all the colors which thefirst frost brings--gold of hickory, yellow-russet of sycamore, red ofdogwood and ash and purple-black of sweet-gum. 

But the Reelfoot country has its uses. It is the best game and fishcountry, natural or artificial, that is left in the South today. Intheir appointed seasons the duck and the geese flock in, and evensemi-tropical birds, like the brown pelican and the Florida snake-bird, have been known to come there to nest. Pigs, gone back to wildness, range the ridges, each razor-backed drove captained by a gaunt, savage, slab-sided old boar. By night the bull frogs, inconceivably big andtremendously vocal, bellow under the banks. 

It is a wonderful place for fish--bass and crappie and perch and thesnouted buffalo fish. How these edible sorts live to spawn and how theirspawn in turn live to spawn again is a marvel, seeing how many of thebig fish-eating cannibal fish there are in Reelfoot. Here, bigger thananywhere else, you find the garfish, all bones and appetite and hornyplates, with a snout like an alligator, the nearest link, naturalistssay, between the animal life of today and the animal life of theReptilian Period. The shovel-nose cat, really a deformed kind offreshwater sturgeon, with a great fan-shaped membranous plate juttingout from his nose like a bowsprit, jumps all day in the quiet placeswith mighty splashing sounds, as though a horse had fallen into thewater. On every stranded log the huge snapping turtles lie on sunny daysin groups of four and six, baking their shells black in the sun, withtheir little snaky heads raised watchfully, ready to slip noiselesslyoff at the first sound of oars grating in the row-locks. 

But the biggest of them all are the catfish. These are monstrouscreatures, these catfish of Reelfoot--scaleless, slick things, withcorpsy, dead eyes and poisonous fins like javelins and long whiskersdangling from the sides of their cavernous heads. Six and seven feetlong they grow to be and to weigh two hundred pounds or more, and theyhave mouths wide enough to take in a man's foot or a man's fist andstrong enough to break any hook save the strongest and greedy enough toeat anything, living or dead or putrid, that the horny jaws can master. Oh, but they are wicked things, and they tell wicked tales of them downthere. They call them man-eaters and compare them, in certain of theirhabits, to sharks. 

Fishhead was of a piece with this setting. He fitted into it as an acornfits its cup. All his life he had lived on Reelfoot, always in the oneplace, at the mouth of a certain slough. He had been born there, of anegro father and a half-breed Indian mother, both of them now dead, andthe story was that before his birth his mother was frightened by one ofthe big fish, so that the child came into the world most hideouslymarked. Anyhow, Fishhead was a human monstrosity, the veritableembodiment of nightmare. He had the body of a man--a short, stocky, sinewy body--but his face was as near to being the face of a great fishas any face could be and yet retain some trace of human aspect. Hisskull sloped back so abruptly that he could hardly be said to have aforehead at all; his chin slanted off right into nothing. His eyes weresmall and round with shallow, glazed, pale-yellow pupils, and they wereset wide apart in his head and they were unwinking and staring, like afish's eyes. His nose was no more than a pair of tiny slits in themiddle of the yellow mask. His mouth was the worst of all. It was theawful mouth of a catfish, lipless and almost inconceivably wide, stretching from side to side. Also when Fishhead became a man grown hislikeness to a fish increased, for the hair upon his face grew out intotwo tightly kinked, slender pendants that drooped down either side ofthe mouth like the beards of a fish. 

If he had any other name than Fishhead, none excepting he knew it. AsFishhead he was known and as Fishhead he answered. Because he knew thewaters and the woods of Reelfoot better than any other man there, he wasvalued as a guide by the city men who came every year to hunt or fish;but there were few such jobs that Fishhead would take. Mainly he keptto himself, tending his corn patch, netting the lake, trapping a littleand in season pot hunting for the city markets. His neighbors, ague-bitten whites and malaria-proof negroes alike, left him to himself. Indeed for the most part they had a superstitious fear of him. So helived alone, with no kith nor kin, nor even a friend, shunning his kindand shunned by them. 

His cabin stood just below the state line, where Mud Slough runs intothe lake. It was a shack of logs, the only human habitation for fourmiles up or down. Behind it the thick timber came shouldering right upto the edge of Fishhead's small truck patch, enclosing it in thick shadeexcept when the sun stood just overhead. He cooked his food in aprimitive fashion, outdoors, over a hole in the soggy earth or upon therusted red ruin of an old cook stove, and he drank the saffron water ofthe lake out of a dipper made of a gourd, faring and fending forhimself, a master hand at skiff and net, competent with duck gun andfish spear, yet a creature of affliction and loneliness, part savage, almost amphibious, set apart from his fellows, silent and suspicious. 

In front of his cabin jutted out a long fallen cottonwood trunk, lyinghalf in and half out of the water, its top side burnt by the sun andworn by the friction of Fishhead's bare feet until it showed countlesspatterns of tiny scrolled lines, its under side black and rotted andlapped at unceasingly by little waves like tiny licking tongues. Itsfarther end reached deep water. And it was a part of Fishhead, for nomatter how far his fishing and trapping might take him in the daytime, sunset would find him back there, his boat drawn up on the bank and heon the outer end of this log. From a distance men had seen him theremany times, sometimes squatted, motionless as the big turtles that wouldcrawl upon its dipping tip in his absence, sometimes erect and vigilantlike a creek crane, his misshapen yellow form outlined against theyellow sun, the yellow water, the yellow banks--all of them yellowtogether. 

If the Reelfooters shunned Fishhead by day they feared him by night andavoided him as a plague, dreading even the chance of a casual meeting. For there were ugly stories about Fishhead--stories which all thenegroes and some of the whites believed. They said that a cry which hadbeen heard just before dusk and just after, skittering across thedarkened waters, was his calling cry to the big cats, and at his biddingthey came trooping in, and that in their company he swam in the lake onmoonlight nights, sporting with them, diving with them, even feedingwith them on what manner of unclean things they fed. The cry had beenheard many times, that much was certain, and it was certain also thatthe big fish were noticeably thick at the mouth of Fishhead's slough. No native Reelfooter, white or black, would willingly wet a leg or anarm there. 

Here Fishhead had lived and here he was going to die. The Baxters weregoing to kill him, and this day in mid-summer was to be the time of thekilling. The two Baxters--Jake and Joel--were coming in their dugout todo it. This murder had been a long time in the making. The Baxters hadto brew their hate over a slow fire for months before it reached thepitch of action. They were poor whites, poor in everything--repute andworldly goods and standing--a pair of fever-ridden squatters who livedon whisky and tobacco when they could get it, and on fish and cornbreadwhen they couldn't. 

The feud itself was of months' standing. Meeting Fishhead one day in thespring on the spindly scaffolding of the skiff landing at Walnut Log, and being themselves far overtaken in liquor and vainglorious with abogus alcoholic substitute for courage, the brothers had accused him, wantonly and without proof, of running their trot-line and stripping itof the hooked catch--an unforgivable sin among the water dwellers andthe shanty boaters of the South. Seeing that he bore this accusation insilence, only eyeing them steadfastly, they had been emboldened then toslap his face, whereupon he turned and gave them both the beating oftheir lives--bloodying their noses and bruising their lips with hardblows against their front teeth, and finally leaving them, mauled andprone, in the dirt. Moreover, in the onlookers a sense of theeverlasting fitness of things had triumphed over race prejudice andallowed them--two freeborn, sovereign whites--to be licked by a nigger. 

Therefore, they were going to get the nigger. The whole thing had beenplanned out amply. They were going to kill him on his log at sundown. There would be no witnesses to see it, no retribution to follow afterit. The very ease of the undertaking made them forget even their inbornfear of the place of Fishhead's habitation. 

For more than an hour now they had been coming from their shack across adeeply indented arm of the lake. Their dugout, fashioned by fire and adzand draw-knife from the bole of a gum tree, moved through the water asnoiselessly as a swimming mallard, leaving behind it a long, wavy trailon the stilled waters. Jake, the better oarsman sat flat in the stern ofthe round-bottomed craft, paddling with quick, splashless strokes. Joel, the better shot, was squatted forward. There was a heavy, rusted duckgun between his knees. 

Though their spying upon the victim had made them certain sure he wouldnot be about the shore for hours, a doubled sense of caution led them tohug closely the weedy banks. They slid along the shore like shadows, moving so swiftly and in such silence that the watchful mud turtlesbarely turned their snaky heads as they passed. So, a full hour beforethe time, they came slipping around the mouth of the slough and made fora natural ambuscade which the mixed breed had left within a stone's jerkof his cabin to his own undoing. 

Where the slough's flow joined deeper water a partly uprooted tree wasstretched, prone from shore, at the top still thick and green withleaves that drew nourishment from the earth in which the half-uncoveredroots yet held, and twined about with an exuberance of trumpet vines andwild fox-grapes. All about was a huddle of drift--last year'scornstalks, shreddy strips of bark, chunks of rotted weed, all theriffle and dunnage of a quiet eddy. Straight into this green clumpglided the dugout and swung, broadside on, against the protecting trunkof the tree, hidden from the inner side by the intervening curtains ofrank growth, just as the Baxters had intended it should be hidden, whendays before in their scouting they marked this masked place of waitingand included it, then and there, in the scope of their plans. 

There had been no hitch or mishap. No one had been abroad in the lateafternoon to mark their movements--and in a little while Fishhead oughtto be due. Jake's woodman's eye followed the downward swing of the sunspeculatively. The shadows, thrown shoreward, lengthened and slitheredon the small ripples. The small noises of the day died out; the smallnoises of the coming night began to multiply. The green-bodied flieswent away and big mosquitoes, with speckled gray legs, came to take theplaces of the flies. The sleepy lake sucked at the mud banks with smallmouthing sounds as though it found the taste of the raw mud agreeable. Amonster crawfish, big as a chicken lobster, crawled out of the top ofhis dried mud chimney and perched himself there, an armored sentinel onthe watchtower. Bull bats began to flitter back and forth above the topsof the trees. A pudgy muskrat, swimming with head up, was moved to sidleoff briskly as he met a cotton-mouth moccasin snake, so fat and swollenwith summer poison that it looked almost like a legless lizard as itmoved along the surface of the water in a series of slow torpid s's. Directly above the head of either of the waiting assassins a compactlittle swarm of midges hung, holding to a sort of kite-shaped formation. 

A little more time passed and Fishhead came out of the woods at theback, walking swiftly, with a sack over his shoulder. For a few secondshis deformities showed in the clearing, then the black inside of thecabin swallowed him up. By now the sun was almost down. Only the red nubof it showed above the timber line across the lake, and the shadows layinland a long way. Out beyond, the big cats were stirring, and the greatsmacking sounds as their twisting bodies leaped clear and fell back inthe water came shoreward in a chorus. 

But the two brothers in their green covert gave heed to nothing exceptthe one thing upon which their hearts were set and their nerves tensed. Joel gently shoved his gun-barrels across the log, cuddling the stock tohis shoulder and slipping two fingers caressingly back and forth uponthe triggers. Jake held the narrow dugout steady by a grip upon afox-grape tendril. 

A little wait and then the finish came. Fishhead emerged from the cabindoor and came down the narrow footpath to the water and out upon thewater on his log. He was barefooted and bareheaded, his cotton shirtopen down the front to show his yellow neck and breast, his dungareetrousers held about his waist by a twisted tow string. His broad splayfeet, with the prehensile toes outspread, gripped the polished curve ofthe log as he moved along its swaying, dipping surface until he came toits outer end and stood there erect, his chest filling, his chinlessface lifted up and something of mastership and dominion in his poise. And then--his eye caught what another's eyes might have missed--theround, twin ends of the gun barrels, the fixed gleams of Joel's eyes, aimed at him through the green tracery. 

In that swift passage of time, too swift almost to be measured byseconds, realization flashed all through him, and he threw his headstill higher and opened wide his shapeless trap of a mouth, and outacross the lake he sent skittering and rolling his cry. And in his crywas the laugh of a loon, and the croaking bellow of a frog, and the bayof a hound, all the compounded night noises of the lake. And in it, too, was a farewell and a defiance and an appeal. The heavy roar of the duckgun came. 

At twenty yards the double charge tore the throat out of him. He camedown, face forward, upon the log and clung there, his trunk twistingdistortedly, his legs twitching and kicking like the legs of a spearedfrog, his shoulders hunching and lifting spasmodically as the life ranout of him all in one swift coursing flow. His head canted up betweenthe heaving shoulders, his eyes looked full on the staring face of hismurderer, and then the blood came out of his mouth and Fishhead, indeath still as much fish as man, slid flopping, head first, off the endof the log and sank, face downward, slowly, his limbs all extended out. One after another a string of big bubbles came up to burst in the middleof a widening reddish stain on the coffee-colored water. 

The brothers watched this, held by the horror of the thing they haddone, and the cranky dugout, tipped far over by the recoil of the gun, took water steadily across its gunwale; and now there was a suddenstroke from below upon its careening bottom and it went over and theywere in the lake. But shore was only twenty feet away, the trunk of theuprooted tree only five. Joel, still holding fast to his hot gun, madefor the log, gaining it with one stroke. He threw his free arm over itand clung there, treading water, as he shook his eyes free. Somethinggripped him--some great, sinewy, unseen thing gripped him fast by thethigh, crushing down on his flesh. 

He uttered no cry, but his eyes popped out and his mouth set in a squareshape of agony, and his fingers gripped into the bark of the tree likegrapples. He was pulled down and down, by steady jerks, not rapidly butsteadily, so steadily, and as he went his fingernails tore four littlewhite strips in the tree bark. His mouth went under, next his poppingeyes, then his erect hair, and finally his clawing, clutching hand, andthat was the end of him. 

Jake's fate was harder still, for he lived longer--long enough to seeJoel's finish. He saw it through the water that ran down his face, andwith a great surge of his whole body he literally flung himself acrossthe log and jerked his legs up high into the air to save them. He flunghimself too far, though, for his face and chest hit the water on the farside. And out of this water rose the head of a great fish, with thelake slime of years on its flat, black head, its whiskers bristling, itscorpsy eyes alight. Its horny jaws closed and clamped in the front ofJake's flannel shirt. His hand struck out wildly and was speared on apoisoned fin, and unlike Joel, he went from sight with a great yell anda whirling and a churning of the water that made the cornstalks circleon the edges of a small whirlpool. 

But the whirlpool soon thinned away into widening rings of ripples andthe cornstalks quit circling and became still again, and only themultiplying night noises sounded about the mouth of the slough. 

 * * * * *

The bodies of all three came ashore on the same day near the same place. Except for the gaping gunshot wound where the neck met the chest, Fishhead's body was unmarked. But the bodies of the two Baxters were somarred and mauled that the Reelfooters buried them together on the bankwithout ever knowing which might be Jake's and which might be Joel's. 

IX

GUILTY AS CHARGED

The Jew, I take it, is essentially temperamental, whereas the Irishmanis by nature sentimental; so that in the long run both of them may reachthe same results by varying mental routes. This, however, has nothing todo with the story I am telling here, except inferentially. 

It was trial day at headquarters. To be exact, it was the tail end oftrial day at headquarters. The mills of the police gods, which grind notso slowly but ofttimes exceeding fine, were about done with theirgrinding; and as the last of the grist came through the hopper, the lastof the afternoon sunlight came sifting in through the windows at thewest, thin and pale as skim milk. One after another the culprits, patrolmen mainly, had been arraigned on charges preferred by a superiorofficer, who was usually a lieutenant or a captain, but once in a whilean inspector, full-breasted and gold-banded, like a fat blue bumblebee. In due turn each offender had made his defense; those who were lyingabout it did their lying, as a rule, glibly and easily and with acertain bogus frankness very pleasing to see. Contrary to a generalopinion, the Father of Lies is often quite good to his children. Butthose who were telling the truth were frequently shamefaced and mumblingof speech, making poor impressions. 

In due turn, also, each man had been convicted or had been acquitted, yet all--the proven innocent and the adjudged guilty alike--hadundergone punishment, since they all had to sit and listen to lectureson police discipline and police manners from the trial deputy. It wasperhaps as well for the peace and good order of the community that thepublic did not attend these séances. Those classes now that are the mostthoroughly and most personally governed--the pushcart pedlers, with thepermanent cringing droops in their alien backs; the sinful small boys, who play baseball in the streets against the statutes made and provided;the broken old wrecks, who ambush the prosperous passer-by in theshadows of dark corners, begging for money with which to keep body andsoul together--it was just as well perhaps that none of them wasadmitted there to see these large, firm, stern men in uniform wrigglingon the punishment chair, fumbling at their buttons, explaining, whining, even begging for mercy under the lashing flail of Third DeputyCommissioner Donohue's sleety judgments. 

"The only time old Donny warms up is when he's got a grudge againstyou, " a wit of headquarters--Larry Magee by name--had said once as hecame forth from the ordeal, brushing imaginary hailstones off hisshoulders. "It's always snowing hard in his soul!"

Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third Deputy Commissioner Donohuewas addicted to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound of his ownvoice. Give to Donohue a congenial topic, such as some one's official orpersonal shortcomings, and a congenial audience, and he excelledmightily in saw-edged oratory, rolling his r's until the torturedconsonants fairly lay on their backs and begged for mercy. 

This, however, would have to be said for Deputy Commissioner Donohue--hewas a hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, whohad climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages, he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquentpoliceman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tastedof the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration--his gray flintsof eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearlyalways, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he wouldplaster on the penalty--and the lecture--twice as thick. Wherefore, because of all these things, the newspaper men at headquarters viewedthis elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional emotions. Presidingover a trial day, he made abundant copy for them, which was very good;but if the case were an important one he often prolonged it until theymissed getting the result into their final editions, which, if you knowanything about final editions, was very, very bad. 

It was so on this particular afternoon. Here it was nearly dusk. Thewindows toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against awall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had startedin at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouchedforward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down betweenhis leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp, and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crestedcormorant upon a barren rock. 

Except for one lone figure of misery, the anxious bench below him was bynow empty. Most of the witnesses were gone and most of the spectators, and all the newspaper men but two. He whetted a lean and crookedforefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket book, turned the pageand called the last case, being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan. Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon curried. For being on suchand such a day, at such and such an hour, off his post, where hebelonged, and in a saloon where he did not belong, sitting down, withhis blouse unfastened and his belt unbuckled; and for having no betterexcuse, or no worse one, than the ancient tale of a sudden attack offaintness causing him to make his way into the nearest place where hemight recover himself--that it happened to be a family liquor store was, he protested, a sheer accident--Patrolman Rogan was required to pay fivedays' pay and, moreover, to listen to divers remarks in which he heardhimself likened to several things, none of them of a complimentarycharacter. 

Properly crushed and shrunken, the culprit departed thence with hisuniform bagged and wrinkling upon his diminished form, and the thirddeputy commissioner, well pleased, on the whole, with his day's hunting, prepared to adjourn. The two lone reporters got up and made for thedoor, intending to telephone in to their two shops the grand total andfinal summary of old Donohue's bag of game. 

They were at the door, in a little press of departing witnesses and latedefendants, when behind them a word in Donohue's hard-rolled officialaccents made them halt and turn round. The veteran had picked up fromhis desk a sheet of paper and was squinting up his hedgy, thick eyebrowsin an effort to read what was written there. 

"Wan more case to be heard, " he announced. "Keep order there, you men atthe door! The case of Lieutenant Isidore Weil"--he grated the name outlingeringly--"charged with--with----" He broke off, peering about himfor some one to scold. "Couldn't you be makin' a light here, some ofyou! I can't see to make out these here charges and specifications. "

Some one bestirred himself and many lights popped on, chasing theshadows back into the far corners. Outside in the hall a policeman doingduty as a bailiff called the name of Lieutenant Isidore Weil, thricerepeated. 

"Gee! Have they landed that slick kike at last?" said La Farge, theolder of the reporters, half to himself. "Say, you know, that ticklesme! I've been looking this long time for something like this to becoming off. " Like most old headquarters reporters, La Farge had hisdeep-seated prejudices. To judge by his present expression, this was avery deep-seated one, amounting, you might say, to a constitutionalinfirmity with La Farge. 

"Who's Weil and what's he done?" inquired Rogers. Rogers was a youngreporter. 

"I don't know yet--the charge must be newly filed, I guess, " said LaFarge, answering the last question first. "But I hope they nail him! Idon't like him--never did. He's too fresh. He's too smart--one of thoseself-educated East Side Yiddishers, you know. Used to be a courtinterpreter down at Essex Market--knows about steen languages. Andhe--here he comes now. "

Weil passed them, going into the trial room--a short, squarely built manwith oily black hair above a dark, round face. Instantly you knew himfor one of the effusive Semitic type; every angle and turn of hisoutward aspect testified frankly of his breed and his sort. And at sightof him entering you could almost see the gorge of Deputy CommissionerDonohue's race antagonism rising inside of him. His gray hacklesstiffened and his thick-set eyebrows bristled outward like bits offrosted privet. Again he began whetting his forefinger on the leatherback of the closed docket book. It was generally a bad sign for somebodywhen Donohue whetted his forefinger like that, and La Farge would havedelighted to note it. But La Farge's appraising eyes were upon theaccused. 

"Listen!" he said under his breath to Rogers. "I think they must havethe goods on Mister Wisenheimer at last. Usually he's the cockiest personround this building. Now take a look at him. "

Indeed, there was a visible air of self-abasement about Lieutenant Weilas he crossed the wide chamber. It was a thing hard to define in words;yet undeniably there was a diffidence and a reluctance manifest in him, as though a sense of guilt wrestled with the man's natural conceit andassurance. 

"Rogers, " said La Farge, "let's hustle out and 'phone in what we've gotand then come back right away. If this fellow's going to get the harpoonstuck into him I want to be on hand when he starts bleeding. "

Only a few of the dwindled crowd turned back to hear the beginning ofthe case, whatever it might be, against the Jew. The rest scatteredthrough the corridors, heading mainly for the exits, so that the twonewspaper men had company as they hurried toward the main door, makingfor their offices across the street. When they came back the long crosshalls were almost deserted; it had taken them a little longer to finishthe job of telephoning than they had figured. At the door of the trialroom stood one bulky blue figure. It was the acting bailiff. 

"How far along have they got?" asked La Farge as the policeman made wayfor them to pass in. 

"Captain Meagher is the first witness, " said the policeman. "He's theone that's makin' the charge. "

"What is the charge?" put in Rogers. 

"At this distance I couldn't make out--Cap Meagher, he mumbles so, "confessed the doorkeeper. "Somethin' about misuse of police property, Itake it to be. "

"Aha!" gloated La Farge in his gratification. "Come on, Rogers--I don'twant to miss any of this. "

It was plain, however, that they had missed something; for, to judge byhis attitude, Captain Meagher was quite through with his testimony. Hestill sat in the witness chair alongside the deputy commissioner's desk;but he was silent and he stared vacantly at vacancy. Captain Meagher wasknown in the department as a man incredibly honest and unbelievablydull. He had no more imagination than one of his own reports. He had along, sad face, like a tired workhorse's, and heavy black eyebrows thatcurved high in the middle and arched downward at each end--circumflexesaccenting the incurable stupidity of his expression. His black mustachedrooped the same way, too, in the design of an inverted magnet. LarryMagee had coined one of his best whimsies on the subject of the shape ofthe captain's mustache. 

"No wonder, " he said, "old Meagher never has any luck--he wears hishorseshoe upside down on his face!"

Just as the two reporters, re-entering, took their seats the trialdeputy spoke. 

"Is that all, Captain Meagher?" he asked sonorously. 

"That's all, " said Meagher. 

"I note, " went on Donohue, glancing about him, "that the accused doesnot appear to be represented by counsel. "

A man on trial at headquarters has the right to hire a lawyer to defendhim. 

"No, sir, " spoke up Weil briskly. "I've got no lawyer, commissioner. "His speech was the elaborated and painfully emphasized English of theself-taught East Sider. It carried in it just the bare suggestion of theracial lisp, and it made an acute contrast to the menacing Hibernianpurr of Donohue's heavier voice. "I kind of thought I'd conduct my owncase myself. "

Donohue merely grunted. 

"Do you desire, Lieutenant Weil, for to ask Captain Meagher anyquestions?" he demanded. 

Weil shook his oily head of hair. 

"No, sir. I wouldn't wish to ask the captain anything. "

"Are there any other witnesses?" inquired Donohue next. 

There was no answer. Plainly there were no other witnesses. 

"Lieutenant Weil, do you desire for to say something in your ownbehalf?" queried the deputy commissioner. 

"I think I'd like to, " answered Weil. 

He stood to be sworn, took the chair Meagher vacated and sat facing theroom, appearing--so La Farge thought--more shamefaced and abashed thanever. 

"Now, then, " commanded Donohue impressively, "what statement, if any, have you to make, Lieutenant Weil, touchin' on this here chargepreferred by your superior officer?"

Weil cleared his throat. Rogers figured that this bespoke embarrassment;but, to the biased understanding of the hostile La Farge, there wassomething falsely theatrical even in the way Weil cleared his throat. 

"Once a grandstander always a grandstander!" he muttered derisively. 

"What did you say?" whispered Rogers. 

"Nothing, " replied La Farge--"just thinking out loud. Listen to whatFoxy Issy has to say for himself. "

"Well, sir, commissioner, " began the accused, "this here thing happenslast Thursday, just as Captain Meagher is telling you. " He had slippedalready into the policeman's trick of detailing a past event in thepresent tense. 

"It's late in the afternoon--round five o'clock I guess--and I'mdownstairs in the Detective Bureau alone. "

"Alone, you say?" broke in Donohue, emphasizing the word as though theadmission scored a point against the man on trial. 

"Yes, sir, I'm alone. It happens that everybody else is out and I'm intemporary charge, as you might say. It's getting along toward dark whenPatrolman Morgan, who's on duty out in the hall, comes in and says to methere's a woman outside who can't talk English and he can't make outwhat she wants. So I tells him to bring her in. She comes in. Rightaway I see she's a Ginney--an Italian, " he corrected himself hurriedly. "She's got a child with her--a little boy about two years old. "

"Describe this here woman!" ordered Donohue, who loved to drag indetails at a trial, not so much for the sake of the details themselvesas to show his skill as a cross-examiner. 

"Well, sir, " complied Weil, "I should say she's about twenty-five yearsold. It's hard to tell about those Italian women, but I should say she'sabout twenty-five--or maybe twenty-six. She's got no figure at all andshe's dressed poor. But she's got a pretty face--big brown eyes and----"

"That will do, " interrupted the deputy commissioner--"that will do forthat. I take it you're not qualifyin' here for a beauty expert, Lieutenant Weil!" he added with elaborate sarcasm. 

"You asked me about her looks, sir, " parried Weil defensively, "and I'mjust trying to tell you. "

"Proceed! Proceed!" bade Donohue, rumbling his consonants. 

"Yes, sir. Well, in regard to this woman: She's talking so fast I can'tfigure out at first what she's trying to tell me. It's Italian she'stalking--or I should say the kind of Italian they talk in parts ofSicily. After a little I begin to see what she's driving at. It seemsshe's the wife of one Antonio Terranova and her name is MariaTerranova. And after I get her straightened out and going slow she tellsme her story. "

"Is this here story got a bearin' on the charges pendin'?"

"I think it has. Yes, sir; it helps to explain what happens. As near asI can make out she comes from some small town down round Messinasomewhere, and the way she tells it to me, her husband leaves there notlong after they're married and comes over here to New York to get work, and when he gets enough money saved up ahead he's going to send back forher. That's near about three years ago. So she stays behind waiting forhim, and in about four months after he leaves the baby is born--the samebaby that she brings in here to headquarters with her last Thursday. Shesays neither one of them thinks it'll be long before he can save upmoney for her passage, but it seems like he has the bad luck. He's sickfor a while after he lands, and then when he gets a job in aconstruction gang the padrone takes the most of what he makes. And justabout the time he gets a little saved up some other Ginney--Italian--inthe construction camp steals it off of him. 

"So he's up against it, and after a while he gets desperate. So he joinsin with a Black Hander gang--amateurs operating up in the Bronx--and thevery first trick he helps turn he does well by it. His share is nearabout a hundred dollars, and he sends her the best part of it to bringher and the baby over. She don't know at the time, though, how he raisesall this money--so she tells me. And I think, at that, she's telling thetruth--she ain't got sense enough to lie, I think. Anyway it soundstruthful to me--the way she tells it to me here last Thursday night. "

"Proceed!" prompted Donohue testily. 

"So she takes this here money and buys herself a steerage ticket andcomes over here with the baby. That, as near as I can figure out, isabout three months ago. She's not seen this husband of hers for going onthree years--of course the baby's never seen him. And she figures he'llbe at the dock to meet her. But he's not there. But his cousin isthere--another Italian from the same town. He gets her through EllisIsland somehow and he takes her up to where he's living--up in theBronx--and tells her the reason her husband ain't there to meet her. Thereason is, he's at Sing Sing, doing four years. 

"It seems that after he's sent her this passage money the husband getsto thinking Black Handing is a pretty soft way to make a living, especially compared to day laboring, and he tries to raise a stakesingle-handed. He writes a Black Hand letter to an Italian grocer heknows has got money laid by, only the grocer is foxy and goes to theTremont Avenue Station and shows the letter. They rig up a plant andthis here Antonio Terranova walks into it. He's caught with the markedbills on him. So just the week before she lands he takes a plea inGeneral Sessions and the judge gives him four years. When she gets towhere she's telling me that part of it she starts crying. 

"Well, anyway, that's the situation--him up there at Sing Sing doing hisfour years and her down here in New York with the kid on her hands. Andshe don't ever see him again, either, because in about three or fourweeks--something like that--he's working with a gang in the rock quarryacross the river, where they're building the new cell house, and a chunkof slate falls down and kills him and two others. "

"Right here and now, " interrupted the third deputy commissioner, "I wantto know what's all this here stuff got to do with these here charges andspecifications?"

"Just a minute, please. I'm coming to that right away, commissioner, "protested the accused lieutenant with a sort of glib nervous agility;yet for all of his promising, he paused for a little bit before hecontinued. And this pause, brief enough as it was, gave the listening LaFarge time to discover, with a small inward jar of surprise, thatsomehow, some way, he was beginning to lose some of his acrid antagonismfor Weil; that, by mental processes which as yet he could not exactlyresolve into their proper constituents, it was beginning to dribbleaway from him. And realization came to him, almost with a shock, thatthe man on the stand was telling the truth. Truth or not, though, thenarrative thus far had been commonplace enough--people at headquartershear the like of it often; and as a seasoned police reporter La Farge'semotions by now should be coated over with a calloused shell inches deepand hard as horn. Trying with half his mind to figure out what it wasthat had quickened these emotions, he listened all the harder as Weilwent on. 

"So this here big chunk of rock or slate or whatever it was falls on himand the two others and kills them. Not knowing where to send the body, they bury it up there at Sing Sing, and she never sees him again, livingor dead. But here just a few days ago it seems she picks up, fromoverhearing some of the other Italians talking, that we've got such athing as a Rogues' Gallery down here at headquarters and that herhusband's picture is liable to be in it. So that's why she's here. She'sfound her way here somehow and she asks me won't I"--he caughthimself--"won't the police please give her her husband's picture out ofthe gallery. "

"And for why did she want that?" rumbled Donohue. 

"That's what I asks her myself. It seems she's got no shame about it atall. She tells me she wants to hang on to it until she can get themoney to have it enlarged into a big picture, and then she's going tokeep it--till the bambino--that's Italian for baby, commissioner, youknow--till the baby grows up, so he can see what his dead father lookedlike. "

Now of a sudden La Farge knew--or thought he knew--why his interest hadstirred in him a minute before. Instinctively his reporter's sixth sensehad scented a good news story before the real point of the story hadcome out, even. A curious little silence had fallen on the half-lighted, almost empty big room. Only the voice of Weil broke this silence:

"Of course, commissioner, I tries to explain to her what thecircumstances are. I tells her that, in the first place, on account ofthe mayor's orders about cutting down the gallery having gone intoeffect, it's an even bet her husband's picture ain't there anyhow--thatit's most likely been destroyed; and in the second place, even if it isthere, I tells her I've got no right to be giving it to her without anorder from somebody higher up. But either she can't understand or shewon't. I guess my being in uniform makes her think I'm running the wholedepartment, and she won't seem to listen to what I says. 

"She cries and she carries on worse than ever, and begs and begs me togive it to her. I guess you know how excitable those Italian women canbe, especially when they are Sicilians. Anyhow, commissioner, after alot of that sort of thing I tells her to wait where she is for a minute. I leaves her and I goes across into the Bertillon room, where thepictures are, and I looks up this here Antonio Terranova. I forget hisnumber now and I don't know how it is he comes to be overlooked whenwe're cleaning out the gallery; but he's there all right, full face andside view, with his gallery number in big white figures on his chest. And, commissioner, he's a pretty tolerable tough-looking Ginney. " Thewitness checked an inclination to grin. "I takes a slant at his picture, and I can't make up my own mind which way he'll look the worst enlargedinto a crayon portrait--full face or side view. I can still hear hercrying outside the door. She's crying harder than ever. 

"I puts the picture back, and I goes out to where she is and tries toargue with her. It's no use. She goes down on her knees and holds thebaby up, and tells me it ain't for her sake she's asking this--it's forthe bambino. And she calls on a lot of Italian saints that I never evenheard the names of some of them before--and so on, like that. It'spretty tough. 

"She's such a stupid, ignorant thing you can't help from feeling sorryfor her--nobody could. " He hesitated a moment as though seeking forwords of explanation and extenuation that were not in his regularvocabulary. "I got kids of my own, commissioner, " he said suddenly, andstopped dead short for a moment. "I'm no Italian, but I got kids of myown!" he repeated, as though the fact constituted a defense. 

"Well, well--what happened then?" The deputy commissioner's frosty voiceseemed to have frozen so hard it had a crack in it. And now then theSemitic face of Weil twisted into a grin that was more thanshamefaced--it was downright sheepish. 

"Why, then, " he said, "when I comes back out of the Bertillon room thesecond time she goes back down on her knees again and she says to me--ofcourse she ain't expected to know what my religion is--maybe thatexplains it, commissioner--she says to me that all her life--everymorning and every night--she's going to pray to the Blessed Virgin forme. That's what she says anyway. So I just lets it go at that. "

He halted as though he were through. 

"Then do I understand that, without an order from any superiorauthority, you gave this here woman certain property belonging to thePolice Department?" Old Donohue's voice was gruffer than common, even. He whetted his talon forefinger on the desk top. 

"Yes, sir, " owned up the Jew. "There's nobody there but just us two. AndI don't know how Captain Meagher comes to find the picture is gone andthat it was me took it--but it's true, commissioner. She goes awaykissing it and holding it to the breast of her clothes--that Rogues'Gallery picture! Yes, sir; I gives it to her. "

The third deputy commissioner's gold-banded right arm was shoved out, with all the lean fingers upon the hand at the far end of it widelyextended. He spoke, and something in his throat--a hard lumpperhaps--husked his brogue and made his r's roll out like dice. 

"Lieutenant Weil, " he said, "I congratulate you! You're guilty!"