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Title: The hermit of Turkey Hollow
        The story of an alibi, being an exploit of Ephraim Tutt, attorney & counselor at law

Author: Arthur Cheney Train

Release date: February 9, 2026 [eBook #77895]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921

Credits: an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HERMIT OF TURKEY HOLLOW ***




 The
 Hermit of Turkey Hollow

 The Story of an Alibi

 Being an Exploit of
 Ephraim Tutt
 Attorney & Counselor at Law

 By
 Arthur Train




 New York
 Charles Scribner’s Sons
 1921




 [Copyright]

 Copyright, 1921, by
 CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

 Copyright, 1921, by The Curtis Publishing Co.




 [Dedication]

 To
 Dean Kirkham Worcester.




 [Epigraph]

 “O my grandfather’s clock was too high for the shelf,
 So it stood ninety years on the floor.
 It was taller by half than the old man himself,
 Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
 It was bought on the morn of the day he was born,
 And was always his treasure and pride,
 But it--stopped--short--never to go again----
 When--the old--man--died.”




 Contents

 Chapter I
 Chapter II
 Chapter III
 Chapter IV




 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow




 Alibi.

“Alibi (al’-i-bi) n. 1. In law, a plea of having been elsewhere at the
time an offense is alleged to have been committed. Hence.--a. The fact
or state of having been elsewhere at the time specified; as, “he
attempted to prove an alibi.”--Cent. Dict.

“If it (alibi) appeared to be founded in truth, it is the best
negative evidence that can be offered. It is really positive evidence
which in the nature of things necessarily implieth a negative.”
Foster, J. Crown Law, 3rd Ed. p. 368 (1762).

“If any one fact necessary to the conclusion is wholly inconsistent
with the hypothesis of the guilt of the accused, it breaks the chain
of circumstantial evidence, upon which the inference depends; and,
however plausible or apparently conclusive the other circumstances may
be, the charge must fail. Of this character is the defense usually
called an alibi; that is, that the accused was elsewhere at the time
of the offense is alleged to have been committed. If this is true, it
being impossible that the accused could be in two places at the same
time, it is a fact inconsistent with that sought to be proved, and
excludes its possibility,” Shaw, C.J., in Commonwealth _vs._ Webster,
5 Cush. 299, 318 (1850).




 The
 Hermit of Turkey Hollow

 I

“All the same,” affirmed “Skinny the Tramp,” “some one o’ these days
them bugs’ll wiggle themselves off’n their pins--an’ do for ye!”

The “Hermit of Turkey Hollow” laughed derisively as he paused in
pinning a large gray moth against the wall of the shanty.

“That’s all bunk!” he asserted with a show of bravado which, however,
concealed a certain uneasiness. “When a thing’s dead--it’s dead! And
that’s the end of it!” he added, pushing in the pin firmly until the
moth, giving a final flutter, remained motionless.

Skinny shook his head.

“No, it ain’t!” said he with conviction. “Nuthin’ ever really
dies--or, if it does, that ain’t the end of it by any manner o’ means!
Your body kin die--like a cocoon--but somethin’ goes on after--like
the butterfly.”

The Hermit threw a nervous glance in the direction of the moth, and
then, evidently reassured, nonchalantly removed a piece of cut plug
from his trousers pocket, bit off an end and held it out to the tramp,
who bisected the remainder.

“But the butterfly dies--” concluded the Hermit decisively, “and then
that’s the end of it--for good an’ all!”

Skinny wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked round the
smelly little shanty, the sides of which were decorated with a
heterogeneous collection of defunct beetles, moths and butterflies.

“The butterfly don’t die--no more’n the cocoon!” declared he. “Nuthin’
dies. The moth flies away out o’ the cocoon, and then--when the moth
dies--somethin’ flies away out o’ the moth.”

“But you can’t see nuthin’,” remarked the Hermit with significance.

“I don’t know whether ye can or not!” replied the tramp
noncommittally. “Some says ye can an’ some says ye can’t. Some claim
they’ve photographed the human soul!”

“What do them as claim ye can see it say it’s like?” inquired the
Hermit in a tone of incredulity, in which nevertheless were mingled
awe and curiosity.

“Mostly like a butterfly--somethin’ with wings--so’s it kin fly, I
s’pose.”

“Huh!” retorted the Hermit. “Just pure bull! That moth, now--how can
you say it ain’t dead?”

Skinny’s jaws relinquished their extreme vigor of motion, as he leaned
forward earnestly towards the Hermit.

“Listen, Bo!” he adjured him. “You think you know all about bugs, an’
worms, an’ snakes, an’ yerbs, an’ trees, an’ weather. An’ I reckon you
do, too! But you don’t ponder none compared to me. I don’t do nuthin’
but think, ’cause I ain’t got nuthin’ else to do. I lie an’ meditate
most all the time. And I hear things--and sense ’em. Sometimes I sit
harkenin’ all night long. I know a lot more’n most folks about things
you can’t see.”

“I don’t say you don’t, Skinny!” admitted the Hermit politely. “I
don’t deny it!”

“There’s two worlds,” affirmed the tramp. “One you kin see an’ smell
an’ touch and one that you ordinarily can’t--right alongside t’other.
But sometimes--dependin’ on circumstances--you can catch a glimpse of
what’s goin’ on there--see ’em an’ hear ’em. You’ve seen ghosts!”

“Sure, I’ve seen ghosts. Everybody’s seen ’em!” readily assented his
companion.

“Well,” continued the tramp, “everythin’ has a ghost--walkin’ right
along beside it all the time--only it’s in that other world--the one
you don’t see.”

“But things don’t have ghosts!” declared the Hermit. “A thing must
have been alive sometime to have a ghost.”

“Everything’s alive!” asserted the tramp. “Rocks an’ trees an’ flowers
an’ water an’ fire an’ bugs an’ beasts as well as folks,--an’ they all
have ghosts an’ none of ’em ever die. An’ they all have a right to
live in the world they’re in until they naturally pass on into the
other. Now, when they go--maybe they go one way, maybe another; but
they all do go; and some folks claim to have seen ’em. An’ mostly they
go with wings--flyin’--shaped like a moth or somethin’ like that.”

The Hermit spat disdainfully through the open doorway.

“Huh!” he remarked with sarcasm. “An’ I s’pose,--you’d say,--when I
die I’ll go flyin’ away like a big gray moth?”

“Like as not!” returned Skinny cheerfully. “Like as not! You got to go
somehow, ain’t ye?”

“All bull!” repeated the Hermit. “You’re just a nut!”

“Just the same!” returned Skinny the Tramp, “leavin’ out entirely me
bein’ a nut, I wouldn’t kill anythin’ that’s alive an’ can feel--for
money! I hate even to put an axe to a tree an’ see the sap ooze out.
How do we know it ain’t sufferin’? An’ when it comes to live
things--I’d be skeert!”

He let his eyes wander over the shanty walls thickly populated with
tiny corpses and shuddered slightly.

“Yus! I’d be skeert to live in this house! Sometime they’ll have their
vengeance!--An’--just as I said,--one o’ these days, they’ll come
wigglin’ off’n them pins an’--do fer ye!”

“An’ then,” mocked the Hermit of Turkey Hollow, “I’ll flutter off out
the winder like I was a moth! Bull, Skinny! All bull!”

 * * * * * *

As may be inferred from the foregoing conversation the Hermit of
Turkey Hollow lived in the world of Fact, while Skinny the Tramp dwelt
in that of Faith,--which is to say, of Truth. Yet, as odd sticks,
there was little to choose between them. As being a house dweller--and
not a mere vagrant open to all the insidious imputations of
vagabondage--the Hermit may of the two have been entitled to greater
social recognition, but being a recluse, although something of a
curiosity and hence in the nature of a local asset,--he was
practically negligible as a factor in the life of the neighborhood.
Skinny the Tramp, on the other hand, was a sociable sort of being who
lived in the open, not because he loved his fellows less but because
he loved nature more.

Turkey Hollow lies three miles to the north and east of the thriving
town of Pottsville in the Mohawk Valley of the Empire State,
surrounded by low hills still thickly covered with second growth
timber; in spots, especially where Chasm Brook flows down into the
westerly end of Turtle Pond, wet and marshy; and elsewhere filled with
a tangled growth of Getchel birch, swamp maple, and alder, save for
the acre or so of cleared upland above the lake where stands the
Hermit’s now deserted shanty.

On the whole, the original turkeys having for several decades been
entirely extinct, the hollow offered no attractions to anybody, save
possibly to naturalists impervious to mosquito bites. It was in truth
a dank sort of place, full of underbrush, and inaccessible except by
the wood road leading to the Hermit’s abode, which some years he
cleared out and some he didn’t, and where you had to go afoot anyway.

Nevertheless, once you got there, you found that the hermit was a
genuine up-to-date hermit, with most of the modern improvements. For
he was neither a hundred years old with a bald pate and long white
whiskers like William Cullen Bryant or Father Time; nor did he mutter
incantations over a seething caldron like the witches in Macbeth, or
meander aimlessly about prattling to himself as conventional hermits
are supposed to do. And his shanty was no cave, but on the contrary a
comfortable enough one-story shack, with windows of glass which, while
they were nailed down tight and hence could not be opened, allowed
plenty of light to stream in. By the door usually stood a butterfly
net, a fish rod, and a hoe and spade,--for he had a small garden where
he raised such vegetables as he needed,--and on one side of the shanty
was a table, on the other his cot, over which by day was thrown a
discolored “comfortable,” while directly “on ax” with the door and
between the two rear windows was a tall, old-fashioned clock--the only
article of any value in the place.

This was, indeed, rather a strange object to be in the middle of the
woods and as it was of shining mahogany, its face decorated with the
sun, moon and stars, ships, savages and zodiacal signs, it was an
object of comment and surmise to the few who visited the place. No one
ventured to ask where it had come from or how the hermit had acquired
it, but he had been once heard to say that it made less noise than a
woman, talked no nonsense, and was all the company anyone had need of.
Even those who had never seen the hermit himself knew that he had a
clock. That is the way of things. People will refer for years to a man
as “the old chap who always wears that pair of gray trousers” and then
accidentally discover that he is a world famous civil engineer or
retired statesman who has swayed the fate of nations. So the hermit
was known by his clock; although regularly once a week he walked to
Pottsville to get his mail and buy groceries. For being an up-to-date
hermit he was not without an occupation,--he drank; and he did it very
well.

He was a large, lumbering man of about sixty years, full-bearded,
bent, frankly ungiven to washing and generally a shade woozy in the
upper story; and nobody could remember Turkey Hollow when he had not
been there.

He was reputed to be possessed of mysterious, ill-gotten wealth hidden
in and about the clearing, and, in spite of his squalor, the rumor
acquired a certain _cachet_ owing to the fact that his correspondence,
regularly inspected by Constable Higgins out of abundant caution,
consisted almost entirely of get-rich-quick-circulars and similar
catch-penny advertisements. His name, which otherwise might never have
been known, was Wilbur Drake,--although he was never referred to as
anything but the “Hermit of Turkey Hollow.” That was his sum total--to
the world at large.

Yet sometime and somewhere, he had perhaps been somebody; and nailed
over his cot in a tarnished oaken frame was a dingy photograph of a
dumpy little girl in pigtails. Why this sick soul had sought seclusion
nobody knew and nobody cared, yet afterwards, although he was morose,
taciturn and brutal in his manners, the Pottsville folk were sorry for
him and regretted that they had not been kinder to him.

Skinny the Tramp was a totally different type of bird,--a “character”
as they all said, beloved of the village children and regarded with
good-natured tolerance by their elders. He was tall, lean, hawkish,
with the traditional stubble about his chin and neck, which a Byronic
negligée exposed to wind and weather. He belonged to Pottsville in
his own way quite as much as did the hermit, for in spite of his
peripatetic sojournings, he was a native of the town and, as James
Hawkins, had passed those earlier days--before manual labor had been
abhorrent to him--in its vicinity, having been even at one time
admitted to the lowlier degrees of the Brotherhood of Abyssinian
Mysteries. This famous order, however, he had ultimately abandoned in
favor of the Hibernating Hoboes of Hesperides, of which he was now a
member in good standing.

The reader will, of course, appreciate that for various
reasons,--including that we may sometime run for public office--the
foregoing names and titles are fictitious; but the organizations
themselves are not, and each in its own way exerts an influence not
lightly to be disregarded, whether one be a yokel on the one hand, or
a yegg on the other. Twice yearly, once on his annual autumn trip to
the Golden West and again on his return therefrom in the spring,
Hawkins, emaciated, hairy, black from coal dust, dropped lightly off
the truck of some fast freight and revisited the scenes of his youth.

Sitting upon a cracker barrel in Colson’s Grocery--so that nutriment
might be the more easily accessible--Skinny the Tramp, like some
wandering scop, bard, or friar of medieval days--would fill the
wagging ears of the countryside with the narrative of his later
wanderings in search of the treasure that somehow always just managed
to elude his grasp. For Skinny believed absolutely that at the foot of
every rainbow there was a Crock of Gold, and he would have gladly died
for his belief--as any gentleman and sportsman would have done, and as
he came very near to doing in this case.

However, while Skinny chased rainbows he declined to do so
afoot--preferring the artificial and speedier means of transportation
afforded by the transcontinental railroad systems, from the trains of
which he was habitually--and at divers times and places,
ignominiously,--hurled, to his great physical and temperamental
detriment. Yet, albeit that he was a high officer of the Hibernating
Hoboes of Hesperides and had once been an Abyssinian Brother of that
elevation known as the “Order of the Sacred Camel of King Menelik,”
from which noble association he had been swiftly dropped for
non-payment of dues, he was, like a multitude of his fellow wanderers,
merely a harmless child of good-nature, nearly a half-wit, essentially
a devotee of Zoroaster, who spent his life following the sun. On these
biennial visits Skinny hung about the town, spending a goodly portion
of his time--both by night and by day--sleeping in a lean-to on the
hillside above Turkey Hollow, and part of it wandering through the
woods,--but always looking for the rainbow that should empty a hoard
of gold into his tattered lap.

Twice yearly also passed through Pottsville the “Sons and Daughters of
the Southland”--the Zingara Gipsies,--in auto trucks and
flivvers--camping for a time on the end of the old, deserted
racetrack,--a sinister crew, surreptitious panderers to credulity and
lust, the men surly and brutal, the women insolent and dirty, but
attracting the imaginative and susceptible bumpkins as a trickle of
molasses will draw a swarm of flies. When in the night they folded
their tents and stole silently away the citizens of Pottsville
invariably discovered that many of their most cherished personal
possessions were unaccountably missing. But no one cared to pursue and
prosecute them. They were too dangerous. Besides, they could have told
things.

In the case of Skinny the Tramp there was, however, a practical as
well as a sentimental reason for these half-yearly stop-overs, the
legal necessity of his putting in a personal appearance to claim and
receipt for the one hundred dollars of income which accrued to his
account every six months from the trust fund created by his mother in
her last will and testament, of which the Honorable--or
“Squire”--Hezekiah Mason was executor. And as Squire Mason is one of
the central figures in this legal tragi-comedy it may perhaps be worth
while to stop for a moment at this point and give him what might be
called the “literary once-over.”

Let us state frankly, without circumlocution or evasion, that while
Hezekiah was known as “honorable” and “squire,” this grim visaged,
tight-lipped country attorney was neither. He was “honorable” only in
a Pickwickian sense; and a “squire” only by courtesy; but why or how
any courtesy should have been extended to him remained a mystery,
since he was the most unpopular man in the county,--evidenced by the
fact that he alone of Pottsville’s masculine élite--which included
the barber, druggist, sheriff and dentist--was not one of the Sacred
Camels of King Menelik, and needless to say it rankled in his dried
peapod of a soul.

Nevertheless, the Hon. Hezekiah was a power for he had mortgages on a
majority of the farms of Somerset County already and his tentacles
were reaching out along the county highways and by-ways after the
others. Moreover, he was the only lawyer practising in either
Pottsville or Somerset Corners so that, in one way or another, he
managed to be mixed up in almost everything that went on. However, he
couldn’t break into the mystic circle of The Abyssinian Brotherhood,
which has a distinct bearing on our narrative. As Sheriff Moses
Higgins,--who was the Grand Supreme Exalted Patriarch and Ruler of the
Sacred Camels of King Menelik--had said at the lodge meeting held
three months before in the P. of H. (No. 769) Hall when Hezekiah had
made his final attempt to become one of the genus dromedary and had
been flatly and contumaciously turned down, refused, rejected,
rebuffed and repudiated--I repeat, as Sheriff Higgins had said on that
well known occasion, it made no difference how big a feller’s bank
account was if he was a stinker, and everybody who had an atom of
brains fer fifty miles ’round knew all-fired well what kind of a cuss
Mason was. Get a feller like that into the Camels and you never could
get rid of him--“once a Camel always a Camel”--the whole herd would be
contaminated. He’d sooner take in “Nigger” Jo, the colored ostler over
to the Phoenix House stable. He spoke fifteen minutes and there wasn’t
a white ball in the box when it was passed.

So Squire Mason nursed his antique grudge and took his revenge in coin
of the realm. Then came the turn of the wheel and Hezekiah found
himself in a position where by the adroit application of five thousand
dollars where it would do most good he could get a strangle hold on
one of the leading politicians of the county. The fact that the only
funds available were those he held as trustee for James Hawkins was
the merest incident and did not disturb him even momentarily. They
were at hand and he used them. Skinny was only a tramp. He might get
run over any day, just as, fortunately for Hezekiah, was Lawyer
Tompkins, of Felchville, the public prosecutor of Somerset, for whose
vacant job the Honorable Squire Mason instantly applied. As he had a
cinch on the local political boss, and as the attorney general needed
the influence of the boss in his own business, and as the attorney
general had a cinch on the governor--he won in a walk and duly became,
by official appointment and designation, for Tompkins’ unexpired term,
district attorney of Somerset County, and having, after forty years of
plodding obscurity, suddenly found himself elevated to office he
instantly became consumed by the fire of ambition. While Cicero says
that “the noblest spirit is most strongly attracted by the love of
glory,” we do not intend by this mere statement of fact to entwine
with any wreath of bay or laurel the perspiring brow of Hezekiah.
Objectively Mason was a bombastic, old-fashioned country lawyer,
acrid, dry as dust, entirely unscrupulous, and, while superficially
shrewd, on the whole rather dull. Noise was his strong point, and
there was not a tougher pair of leather lungs in the Mohawk Valley,
down which he now looked with longing eyes towards the capital at
Albany, hoping perhaps to roar loud enough so that he could be heard
there, which at times seemed by no means impossible. Once ambition
stirs a man’s soul no height appears too high for him to scale.


 “On the summit see,
 The scales of office glitter in his eyes:
 He climbs, he pants, he grasps them! At his heels,
 Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
 And with a dexterous jerk soon twists him down,
 And wins them, but to lose them in his turn.”


And now, having had one piece of luck, the lightning of fortune, as
sometimes happens, struck him again.

Pottsville is the kind of “hick” town where the girls bob their hair
and the boys wear the very latest “pineapple” cut, where you can buy
“college ices” and “sundaes” at the drug store, but where the movies
run only twice a week and the barber shop is open only after four
o’clock on Saturdays. There is a smutty little wooden railroad
station, a memorial library of funereal granite, a brick business
block bearing date 1879, an octagonal horse-trough right in the middle
of Main Street, and the rickety old Phoenix Hotel, run by “Ma” Best,
_née_ Louisa Barrows, whose dad, “Old Doc Barrows,” was sent up to
Sing Sing for high-financing the countryside.

There are, in addition, two churches, Baptist and Methodist, each
white with green shutters and a steeple,--a court house, the Mohawk
Palace Theater (celluloid), the P. of H. Hall, the “Pottsville Dry
Goods Emporium” belonging to “Toggery Bill” Gookin, Meachem’s Notion
Store and Colson’s Grocery. The street is unpaved and from February to
April is ankle high with mud. Such towns still survive even in the
Empire State. But while Pottsville will refer to Somerset Corners five
miles away as a “hick” town, it remains serenely oblivious of its own
hickitude.

It was here that on a soft Saturday afternoon towards the end of
April, Squire Mason’s great moment came--that opportunity knocked upon
his office door and beckoned to him. And Hezekiah did not hesitate.

He had been more than usually sour all day, for he had quarreled with
his wife at breakfast and when he reached the office he had found that
a farmer over Felchville way whose mortgage he held--and on whose
prompt payment he had relied to cover James Hawkins’ semiannual
interest of like amount, had unexpectedly defaulted. And--curse
it!--at eleven o’clock Skinny had come for his money, peering
apologetically through the door like the half-wit that he was,
twisting his faded bicycle cap between his fingers, almost afraid to
ask the squire for what was his.

“Mornin’, squire,” he said, leaning awkwardly against the door jamb.
“Been well, I trust?”

The Honorable Hezekiah Mason regarded the tramp malevolently.

“Tol’rable!” he replied curtly. “I s’pose you’ve come after your
money.”

“Yes,” assented Skinny. “Still,” he added politely, “if it ain’t
convenient----” His blue eyes roved vaguely around the barren room
seeing nothing.

“Look here, Skinny!” remarked the lawyer gruffly, “what’s the use of
my turning over a hundred dollars to you to throw away? Why don’t you
let me keep it an’ invest it for you? The way you live ain’t
provident. A penny saved is a penny earned, an’ a hundred dollars is a
lot of money.”

“It’s very kind of you,” faltered Skinny, “but I don’t throw it away.
Honest Injun, I don’t. It keeps me wanderin’--I’d like it if you kin
let me have it.” He paused and took a timid step towards the squire.
“May I ask you a question?”

Now the one thing in the world that Squire Mason did not want was any
question from Hawkins about the whereabouts of his money. He had
intended to put the tramp off, but now he swiftly changed his mind.

“Your money’s all right,” he retorted, getting to his feet. “You don’t
need to worry any ’bout it! I’ll go get it fer you!”

“Thank you,” replied Skinny. “I was only goin’ to ask----”

But Mason had bolted through the door. Ten minutes later he returned
and handed the tramp five twenty dollar bills, for which he took
Skinny’s receipt.

“Now,” he remarked brusquely, “you’ve got your money. You better get
along. I’m busy this mornin’!”

But Skinny had a matter of vital moment upon what by a euphemism might
have been termed his mind. It had been troubling him ever since his
conversation with the hermit with which this chronicle opens. And he
wanted the opinion of Squire Mason, as a learned man who presumably
knew all about such things.

“I’d like to ask you a question, squire!” he persisted.

Mason, cornered in his office, turned on him like a rat.

“Well,--ask it!” he snapped defiantly.

“I want to ask you if folks that know about such things think that
when a thing’s dead it’s dead?”

The squire stared at him contemptuously.

“P’tah!” he ejaculated. “What are you ravin’ about?”

“About whether when folks die that’s the end of ’em,” explained
Skinny. “And if it’s the same with the animals.”

Mason took courage. Skinny was not bothered about the safety of his
principal.

“What’s the use conjecturin’ about things like that?” he asked more
genially.

“It’s kinder important, ain’t it?” returned the tramp.

The lawyer pursed his lips and gazed for an instant through the window
upon the sill of which a blue-bottle lay upon its back with its legs
stiffly in air. Then he turned sententiously to the tramp.

“If you really want to know what I think,” he answered. “When a man’s
dead, he’s dead.”

Skinny, his money in his pocket but troubled in his mind, made his way
slowly back to Turkey Hollow. The sun, which had been shining when he
had gone into the squire’s office, had become obscured by a bank of
cloud and it looked like rain, but all about him as he strode through
the woods the dogwoods were bursting into blossom amid a background of
diaphanous budding green. The spring was stirring in him, too. A
hundred dollars! Visions of purple valleys, of cool, trickling ravines
dank with spreading ferns, of fragrant fields of hay in which to
lie--without the necessity of chopping a single piece of kindling to
pay for his supper--rose in his mind. Wouldn’t it be great to be rich!
To lie in a hammock with a feather pillow under his head in the shade
of an orange tree and a nigger to hand him cool drinks and sandwiches
and gold-tipped cigarettes! To ride luxuriantly inside a Pullman car
or stand on the clinking back platform of the Sunset Limited watching
the misty mountains turn from azure to rose and from rose to
lilac--and pitying the bums walking the sleepers. To
sleep--sleep--sleep--in a big, soft bed! To have a man delicately
remove the hair from your neck and chin and scent your cheeks with
cologne water! To go into a grand hotel, bully the waiter, and eat
everything on the bill of fare without asking the price! Money! That
would do it. But a hundred dollars was only a flea bite! What he
needed was the real kale--a whole pot of gold!

It had begun to rain by the time he had cooked his dinner, and
afterwards, as he sat in the opening of his shack smoking cigarettes,
it grew very dark and for half an hour poured down in torrents. Then
as will happen in fickle April the sun burst forth and turned the
leaden world into a dripping golden grotto, where every bough and twig
and leaf’s edge gleamed with a jeweled setting of pearls and diamonds,
and the hot mist rose shimmering from the steaming ground. Gold--gold
everywhere! Gold--the mystic element sought of the alchemists and of
the philosophies of ancient, medieval and modern times alike. Gold!

Suddenly Skinny stiffened and sat erect. Thrown against the torn black
wind clouds of the departing storm was a great arch whose glowing
colors pained the eye, a perfect piece of heavenly architecture. High
it rose into the zenith a concentrated prismatic glory--emblem of the
eternal hope that sprang in the tramp’s breast. One end of the arc
came to earth far to the west--the golden west--and the other plunged
down at his feet into Turkey Hollow. There was no doubt about it at
all. Right into Turkey Hollow--right upon the hermit’s shanty, which
he could see through the interlacing boughs of the hillside sharply
defined as in a spotlight of saffron. Skinny started to his feet. If
he could only reach the hermit’s shanty before the rainbow faded the
crock of gold would be there. Sure! His mind never doubted it. It was
there now. If he hurried--this time he might find it! Without a
moment’s hesitation Skinny plunged down the hillside through the
reeking undergrowth, drenched to the skin, slipping, falling now on
beds of soaking moss, now over roots and stones--blood smearing his
face and hands--until he crashed down through the clump of birches
next the clearing.

A man was sitting there under a boulder smoking a pipe, his ax across
his knees--waiting evidently for things to dry up a bit. He waved at
Skinny, but the tramp was too intent to answer him. Then came the
yellow gleam of the clearing through the brush and the shanty rose
hard against the sky just beyond. Surely he must be in time!

He had emerged from the woods in the rear of the shanty on the edge of
the potato patch and he did not trouble to go around it but plowed
straight through the muddy rows, leaving a deep wake behind him across
the loam. Panting and dripping with sweat, Skinny hurried to the
nearest window of the shanty, the one above the hermit’s cot, and
peeked in. What he saw made his heart stand still. The sun was pouring
through the opposite window upon the back of the hermit, who sat bowed
over the table; and in front of him--its overflowing contents sending
yellow flashes darting into the dim recesses of the hut--stood a small
red bean-pot or “crock”--still sticky with earth--filled with shining
gold pieces. An expression of transcendental satisfaction illuminated
Skinny’s face. His faith was justified--as he had known and predicted
all along that eventually it would be. His confidence in his own
mental processes and spiritual beliefs rebounded from where it had
been crushed to earth by Squire Mason’s crass materialism.
Stealthily--so as not to frighten the hermit--he crept towards the
open door of the shanty.…


It was Charlie Emerson--the man sitting under the boulder with his ax
across his knees--who heard the shot that killed the hermit. He was
not a native of Pottsville, although he usually could be found there
every spring, working over at Sampson’s steam lumber mill at the lower
end of Turtle Pond. This particular Saturday he had got the afternoon
off to fill an order for pea sticks which he purposed cutting from the
birches which grew thick in the less swampy part of Turkey Hollow, and
he was right in the middle of it when the thunderstorm came up and he
had to stop for awhile until the sun should dry the bushes off.

He saw Skinny cruising through the underbrush and was puzzled by the
fact that the tramp ignored his salutation. But he had gone on smoking
and, after taking a short nap, had resumed his work on the pea sticks.
Then, as the sun had begun to slant through the tree trunks and the
shadow of the hill to come creeping across the marsh, the hot silence
of the afternoon had been shattered first by a cry for help and then
by a shot--both from the hermit’s shanty less than two hundred yards
away. Ax in hand he made the distance through the thickets in less
than three minutes, and as he broke cover into the clearing behind the
house he saw the undergrowth moving on the other side and heard the
snapping of twigs.

It was so still that he could hear the drone of a bee in the fringe of
meadow-sweet down by the well, and--coupled with the cry--it gave him
a weird creepy feeling such as he never knew before. But he took a
good grip on himself, walked round the shanty, and looked in through
the open door.

Everything was as usual--the clock, the cot, the rickety table, the
chair, the fish rod and butterfly net, all were undisturbed--except
that the hermit lay upon his back on the floor, his arms outstretched,
the blood jetting from his mouth, a film gathering in his wide open
eyes. Emerson knelt by the side of the dying man and gently lifted the
great hairy head. The blood that came from his mouth made a queer
guttering sound--grotesquely resembling to his agitated mind the faint
clucking of a hen. Then the noise stopped; the hermit no longer
breathed; and the lumberman as he lowered the hermit’s head to the
floor heard the loud beat of an insect’s wings and observed a large
gray moth flapping frantically against the window. He had seen a
million moths--! Yet, with relief Emerson saw it vanish through the
open doorway.

With averted face he threw the “comfortable” across the hermit’s body
and, as he did so, noticed the broken fragments of a small, red clay
pot lying beneath the table. One of the hermit’s hands protruded from
beneath the coverlet--grasping tightly a single gold-piece. Emerson,
standing in the stifling atmosphere of the hut, could hear no sound
but the beating in his ears of his own heart.

The mill hand dashed from the shanty, marking the footprints in the
garden patch, and hunted courageously for the murderer in the
surrounding woods; but the criminal had too good a start. Then, with
no doubt whatever in his mind as to who it had been, he ran down the
wood road that joined the main highway half a mile from the shanty.


There had been a big gang assembled in Colson’s Grocery waiting for
the barber shop to open next door when Skinny entered at almost
precisely four o’clock by the Western Union automatically regulated
clock over the candy counter; and, while nobody had paid much
attention to him at the time, it was remembered distinctly afterwards
that he had been breathing hard and excited, and had ordered a bottle
of root beer and drank it with a sort of ostentatious, devil-may-care
indifference. He had also remarked to someone that he had cut his
finger in the woods, and his handkerchief was bloody.

Most of the crowd were still there when, fifteen minutes later,
Charlie Emerson, the lumber man with the ax, reached the village with
the news that the hermit had been murdered.

He came running down the road all splashed with mud and the fellows in
Colson’s could hear him shouting nearly a furlong away. There was a
general stampede for the street,--in which the occupants of the brick
block, the barber shop, and the drug store all joined. Emerson came
staggering along--stopping every few yards to yell “Murder!”--and
brought up exhausted in front of the stairs leading to Squire Mason’s
office, which was opposite the sheriff’s on the first landing.

“Th’ hermit’s been murdered!” he panted hysterically. “Shot right
through the lungs!--Where’s the sheriff?--Gosh, it’s fierce!--Where’s
Squire Mason?”

The crowd surged round him, Squire Mason’s head appeared at his
window, and then, with a whoop, they all rushed up the stairs to the
sheriff’s office. But Mason held the crowd back sternly on the
landing.

“I’m prosecutor o’ this county!--I’ll take care o’ this witness!” he
announced in a tone of authority. “Now some o’ you hustle over and
fetch the sheriff--he’s gone down to the station fer the mail. An’
don’t none of you dare so much as move ’till he comes and tells you
what to do.--Now, you!” to the ax-man--“Come into my office an’ let me
take your deposition.”

There was a murmur of disappointment from the crowd as Mason firmly
conducted Emerson inside and shut the door; but they all obediently
poured down the stairs again after the sheriff. Then some one began to
ring the fire alarm and, by the time Sheriff Higgins reached the horse
trough, the mob was so dense in front of the doorway that he could
hardly force his way through. He was inside less than a minute before
he reappeared at Mason’s window.

“Anybody seen Skinny Hawkins?” he cried excitedly.

“He was here a minute ago!” answered someone.

“I seen him walkin’ off down the road towards the race track--just
afore the bell began ringin’!” yelled up a small boy.

“Well!” shouted Higgins, “get after him an’ stop him.--Don’t let him
get away!”

The next instant the pack were in full cry.

 * * * * * *

Perhaps if Skinny hadn’t been a half-wit he wouldn’t have run. Perhaps
he should have pulled himself together--and with his pockets full of
the hermit’s gold and his boots covered with mud from the hermit’s
potato patch--he should have boldly answered: “Here I am! What do you
want of me?” and marched up to the sheriff’s office. But, on the other
hand, perhaps many a more sensibly-minded man than he under the same
unfortunate circumstances would have taken to his legs. Admit, it was
a foolish and useless thing to do! We have all on occasion lost our
nerve--even if we all be wise men. And certainly Skinny was not wise!

He could not deny having been in the hermit’s company within half an
hour, the gold was on his person, the mud upon his feet. He had been
caught almost, had his addled memory retained the phrase, _in
flagrante delicto_. Being a tramp, used to rough treatment even from
ordinarily kind people, accustomed to be called a vagabond and a thief
and to have the dogs set upon him, familiar from long experience with
his brother hoboes with tales of tortures and lynchings in which the
knotted rope and kerosene figured vividly, Skinny fled in a hysteria
of fear down the road towards the race track and thence across the
fields into the woods.

He was less than three minutes ahead of the crowd at the start and
unfortunately for him the sheriff’s flivver was standing in front of
the drug store, so that by the time he took cover they were actually
at his heels. Moreover, a dozen of the older boys sensing that he
might try to beat back towards the Hollow ran up the crossroad to cut
him off. The fact that most of them liked him was nothing. A chase was
a chase. Hare and hounds,--while it lasted. Besides, this was a hunt
for a murderer--and flight was equivalent to confession.

Badly winded, Skinny crashed through the woods, the shouts of his
pursuers close in his ears. Ahead he could see the blue sky through
the trees where the fields began again. He reached the edge and came
dead upon a man plowing. Faintly borne on the wind he heard the
distant clang of the fire bell and a couple of revolver shots from
nearer at hand. “Putt!” they said. “Putt-putt!” Skinny did not like
the sound of them. He ducked back and ran like a fagged fox along the
hedge by the field, then paused to listen again. There was a crackling
in the brush to the left while just beyond, on the other side of the
open, the barber and the drug clerk, who had followed a wood road
suddenly appeared staring directly at him.

“Hi!” yelled the barber, waving his razor which he had carried in his
hand. “Hi! Here he is! This way!”

The crackling behind him grew louder. He could see shadows stealthily
creeping from tree to tree. Of course they thought him armed! They
might shoot! He did not know what to do. He did not want either to be
carved up by the barber or to be blown to bits by a shotgun. His
tongue was like a baked potato and his lungs ached as if with
rheumatism. He could hardly see. There they were--hundreds of them--!

“’S all right, Bill!” he called hoarsely. “I ain’t tryin’ to git
away.”

And he staggered out a few feet between the furrows and fell in a
faint. It was characteristic of him that he had made no attempt to
throw away the hermit’s gold.

Twenty minutes later “Ma” Best, who had been quietly cooking in the
Phoenix House kitchen throughout the whole disturbance, heard a great
shouting down the road and went to the door to see what it was all
about. Over by the “deppo” she could see a crowd of men and boys
pushing or dragging somebody in their midst. The smaller of the boys
danced and capered ahead of the throng, one of them turning fancy
“cartwheels.” Then came Sheriff Higgins, stalking along importantly,
two men with shotguns on either side of him, followed by the barber,
Mr. Perkins the proprietor of the Mohawk Palace, and old Colson the
grocer. Directly behind this cluster of notables--who in a grotesque
way suggested a group of Roman senators escorted by their lictors--at
an interval of perhaps ten feet, walked Skinny the tramp, his face
pale as that of the murdered hermit, hatless, a rope around his neck,
and his hands bound behind his back. The end of the rope was held by
no less a personage than “Toggery Bill” Gookin, who providentially had
happened to be returning from a visit to Zayda the Zingara Gipsy
fortune teller at the moment of Skinny’s capture. From time to time
the haberdasher would jerk the rope as if the tramp were a horse and
the more light-minded in the crowd would cluck and call out “Geddap!”
For the rest, they swarmed along in a mob, yelling, joking, uttering
cat-calls and other vague and meaningless noises.

“What’s the trouble, sheriff?” called out “Ma” Best. “What yer doin’
with Skinny?”

The dignity of Sheriff Higgins did not permit him to make reply.
Instead the crowd yelled at her generally.

“’S killed the hermit!” shouted an urchin. “Murdered him!--Whoop-ee!
Hurray!”

“Murder nuthin’!” snorted “Ma” Best. “You’re jest a pack of
idiots.--Skinny wouldn’t kill a spider!”

“Whee-uup! Whoop! Hurray!” shrieked the crowd in the delight of having
conducted a successful man-hunt, jumping around “Toggery Bill” and his
victim, as a pack of hounds will jump, snapping and barking about the
body of the fox they have run to earth. “Whee-uup! Hurray!--Lynch him!
String him up!”

They had reached the horse-trough and the two men with the shotguns
held back the crowd while Sheriff Higgins relieved “Toggery Bill” of
the rope and led Skinny upstairs to his office. In a moment the
sheriff appeared at the window.

“Feller citizens of Pottsville!” he shouted. “In the name o’ the
People of the State of New York I call on ye to disperse peaceable and
go to your homes. There ain’t goin’ to be no lynchin’ nor nuthin’ like
that. Skinny’s goin’ to the jail and he’s goin’ to stay there until
the Grand Jury has acted on his case which will be day after
to-morrer. Now, there’s no use kickin’ up any fuss or ruction and I
warn ye not to go near Turkey Hollow. Kindly disperse!”

Skinny the Tramp having been treated to a brief and exceedingly crude
variety of the “third degree” in the sheriff’s office, and having
“stood mute,” was transferred to the calaboose, where Sam Bellows,
who, owing to his obesity, could not take any more active part, was
set to watch him. It is doubtful whether Skinny would have made any
further attempt to get away, even if “paroled in his own custody”; for
his flight had been the instant, automatic reaction from a paroxysm of
terror in which he visioned himself as a human torch--not the result
of any genuine hope that he could escape the processes of the law, for
whose far-reaching effectiveness he had in fact a vast respect.

Now that he had been brought back without having been lynched, his
instinct told him to hold his tongue. He was no match for them--not
even for Sheriff Higgins--and he knew it. If he said anything they
would twist it somehow against him. His only hope lay in the quantum
of evidence. Nobody had seen him at the hermit’s shanty, so why admit
that he had been there? That was only common caution. Anybody could
have gold pieces; and if he had left any tracks there was no way of
proving when they had been made. So Skinny obstinately refused to open
his mouth, and sat on a decayed chair in the unsanitary box resembling
a flagman’s shanty which passed for a jail while the youth--the
extreme youth--of Pottsville sat in rows around Sam Bellows, dividing
their attention between comments upon his beauty of person and audible
conjectures as to the probable fate of the murderer within.

Contemporaneously Squire Mason, having in his office reduced to
written form the testimony of Emerson the lumberman, unexpectedly
realized that he was confronted by a disturbing problem in legal
ethics. Here he was, hardly appointed district attorney a week before
the most sensational murder ever committed in the county had occurred
at his very door! It was his chance!--the chance of a lifetime!--a
sure conviction! But--and here was the rub!--were his relations to the
accused such that he could properly conduct the case against him? At
best could he take any more active part in the trial than as a mere
witness, considering the fact that he was trustee of the tramp’s money
and bore to him the confidential relationship of lawyer to client?
Could he even appear against him as a witness? Might not the half-wit,
indeed, have had murder in his mind that very morning when he had
asked him if “anything ever really died?” The squire’s hopes wilted at
the thought and his heart fell. Why, it was the biggest opportunity
for legitimate notoriety since the Rosenthal murder! It was ridiculous
to let a little thing like the fact that he was Skinny’s trustee make
any difference! No one would in fact need to know? If Skinny remained
mute, as he apparently intended to do, it probably would never come to
light,--at any rate not until Hawkins had been convicted, and then it
would sink into insignificance in the blaze of his glory. There was
nothing to connect him with Skinny in any way, for the five
twenty-dollar bills which he had delivered to the tramp that morning
had not been found upon him when he was arrested. No,--the chance was
worth taking. A brave man would take it; and fortune always favored
the brave!

Squire Mason, however, was not the only brave man in Pottsville, for
Sheriff Moses Higgins meanwhile had started for Turkey Hollow to make
an examination of the scene of the crime. With him in the flivver
officially designated as “Lizzie” were Emerson, the lumberman, the two
armed deputies and Mr. Pennypacker, the photographer from Somerset
Corners, for the sheriff was up on all the latest modern methods of
detecting crime and knew just how it should be done. And some day they
would all have to be witnesses and testify to exactly what they had
seen.

They left the flivver where the wood road from the Hollow joined the
highway and walked in the rest of the way on foot. It was a
circumstance commented on by all of them that the sheriff’s order,
that nobody should visit the scene of the murder until he had done so,
had been strictly obeyed. But the ghastly corpse of a murdered man is
its own best guardian--particularly if it be that of a hermit lying in
his blood--alone in a bosky, lonely spot--with evening coming on. The
peaceful inhabitants of Pottsville had no great hankering to see how
the dead hermit looked, much preferring the less grim sport of
tramp-baiting. So the five men met no one on their way; neither did
any sound break the silence of the woods about them.

An unexpected pall descended upon their spirits. It had been great
sport to jump into a motor with guns and cameras, and whirr off
consequentially in a cloud of dust, leaving the staring crowd gazing
enviously after them. They had even cracked jokes while they were on
the road. But now, with the sun already behind the ridge that framed
the Hollow upon which the shadows were closing steadily as if night
were about to clutch it in its fingers, with no sound save the creak
of their own boots or the gibber of a chipmunk in the alders to break
the deathly silence of the woods, they found conversation difficult.
The men with the shotguns felt fairly comfortable--although of course
it would be a cinch for anybody lurking in the bushes to shoot the lot
of them. But Sheriff Higgins, who although a sheriff and the Supreme
Exalted Ruler of the Sacred Camels of King Menelik had never seen a
dead body and was more of a “family man” than a bloodhound, and “Cy”
Pennypacker, whose most daring adventure had been to invite Zayda the
Zingara vamp to his studio to be photographed--for which he paid
heavily afterwards at home, and who now, owing to the weight of his
camera and plate holders, found difficulty in keeping up with the
others,--both these worthies secretly began to wish that they could
escape the duty which lay before them.

“Ssh!” suddenly whispered Emerson, and they all jumped; then stood
tensely in their tracks.

Far up on the dark hillside could be heard at intervals of a few
seconds the snapping of twigs.

“That’s a long ways off!” said the sheriff inconsequently.

They resumed their pilgrimage at a somewhat lessened pace; but at last
they could see the opening-up of the trees against the sky that marked
the hermit’s clearing.

“Hold up a second!” remarked the sheriff nervously. “Le’s decide about
this thing! Suppose you fellers with the guns go first--so’s to be all
ready--an’ then I’ll come right along----”

“Look here, Moses,” retorted one of the gunmen. “I ain’t got no
partic’lar objection to goin’ first, but you’re sheriff an’ I reckon
it’s up to you.”

Mr. Higgins hesitated. As Patriarch of the Sacred Camels it would not
do to permit any intimation of pusillanimity upon his part to get
abroad.

“Guess you’re right!” he remarked carelessly. “Gimme the gun.”

“What for?” demanded its owner. “You don’t need no gun to shoot a dead
man!”

“I know that ’s well as you do!” retorted the sheriff. “But wha’d you
bring a gun fer if there wasn’t no use fer it?--Le’s go up together!”

Thus reinforced the sheriff and his companion cautiously approached
the open door of the hermit’s shanty, on which the shadow of the ridge
had already fallen and was now slipping across the potato patch
towards the edge of the woods. On the threshold they paused. Then the
sheriff, swallowing, thrust in his head. It was so dark that at first
he could see only the face of the hermit’s old clock leering at him
out of the dusk. Then gradually he made out the crumpled bundle that
had been the hermit, lying in front of it. A grimy fist protruded from
beneath the covering. The sheriff bent over gingerly and took hold of
one corner of the comfortable. Then he withdrew his hand quickly. The
bedding had been lying upon the floor and was soaked in blood.

“God!” shrieked the sheriff and tottered out of the shanty.

“What’s th’ matter?” demanded Emerson rudely.

“There’s blood on everything--all over the place!” gasped Higgins.

“Well,--didn’t you look at him?” continued the lumberman brutally.

“I’m goin’ to, soon’s I kin git the blood off’n my hands!” returned
the sheriff valiantly.

He rubbed his fingers ostentatiously in the grass. Then he crept back
to the door of the shanty and looked in. The man with the gun poked
the comfortable off the hermit’s body.

“P’thah!” coughed the sheriff recoiling. “P’thah!--Somebody else
search that body--I can’t!”

He leaned heavily against the outside of the shanty and lowered his
head.


Nobody in Pottsville went to bed that night, and next day both local
clergymen preached rival sermons upon the text, “Thou shalt not kill.”
Also, although few of the inhabitants had taken the slightest interest
in the hermit during his life, except to deride him as a crank and a
drunkard, there was universal mourning for him now that he was dead;
for it was felt that in a way his presence in the Hollow had given a
certain distinction to the township which otherwise it would not have
had. It was a great moment for Pottsville. And so were the days
following during which the Grand Jury indicted Skinny for murder and
the case of “The People vs. James Hawkins” gradually built itself up,
block by block, “line upon, line,” “here a little and there a little,”
circumstance upon circumstance, until his guilt seemed established
beyond the utmost requirement of the law.

Then the gipsies, having weathered the rather superficial
investigation of the prosecutor, moved on to the “Sunny Southland” or
wherever it was that they were going, and six weeks later Local Lodge
No. 948 of the Brotherhood of Abyssinian Mysteries convened at
Somerset Corners to debate whether the fact that James Hawkins was an
ex-member entitled him to pecuniary assistance for the purpose of
retaining counsel, upon the broad theory that once a Sacred Camel of
King Menelik--“always a camel.” For he had given the high-sign for
help and the Treasury of the Hibernating Hoboes of Hesperides was
empty,--since the twenty shiny new five-dollar gold pieces which had
been found in Skinny’s pocket upon his arrest had been removed
therefrom and now reposed in the safe of the district attorney as
evidence against him.

Thus came opportunity to the door of Hezekiah Mason for the second
time; for in his widely heralded prosecution of Skinny the tramp, he
perceived “a stepping stone to higher things,”--not on his own “dead
self” but on the “dead selves” of Skinny and the hermit. Had not one
well-known public prosecutor, he told himself, leaped into the
gubernatorial saddle, and for a space held the reins of office, merely
because he had convicted a policeman of participating in the murder of
a gambler? Why should not he do the same for convicting a
distinguished tramp of the murder of a famous hermit? Indeed, who
shall quarrel with his logic?


“Tutt,” said Mr. Ephraim Tutt, of the well-known, if not celebrated,
law firm of Tutt & Tutt, on entering his office the morning after the
meeting of the Abyssinian Brothers, “kindly take a look at this!” And
he held out a night-letter telegram.


                                             “Somerset Corners, N.Y.

 “Tutt & Tutt, Attorneys-at-Law,
   “61 Broadway, N. Y. City.

 “Local Lodge Nine Hundred and Forty-eight, Abyssinian Brotherhood,
 desires retain you to defend James Hawkins, otherwise known as Skinny
 the Tramp, indicted for murder of Hermit of Turkey Hollow
 twenty-seventh last May. Our resources limited to two hundred and
 fifty dollars cash. Trial takes place next week. Kindly advise whether
 you will accept retainer.

                                                  “Silas Higley,

 “Grand Supreme Scribe, Sacred Camels of King Menelik, Brotherhood of
 Abyssinian Mysteries.

 “_Collect._”


“Well,” commented his sprightly partner, the lesser Tutt of the two,
“I observe that they prudently sent their invitation at our
expense.--You don’t seriously consider bothering with any legal junk
like that?”

Mr. Tutt paused in applying a match to the rat-tailed stogy which
drooped from his wrinkled lips.

“I wouldn’t miss it for a farm!” declared he. “A country murder
trial?--Why, it’ll be a regular vacation for me!”

“There be no money in it!” growled his junior partner. “And it’ll take
you a week.”

“Who asks money,” demanded Mr. Tutt, striking an heroic attitude,
“when innocence calls for succor? Could any true-hearted member of the
bar--if he had a trace of romance in his soul--refuse to defend a
prisoner known by ‘form and style’ as ‘Skinny the Tramp,’ especially
if he be charged with murdering a hermit, and still more particularly
if requested to do so by the Order of the Sacred Camels of King
Menelik, whose invitation is a command? What, may I ask, are hermits
for--but to be murdered?”

“You’re incorrigible!” sighed Tutt. “I suppose the whole office will
be depleted.”

“No--I’ll try the case alone!” replied his senior, “I’ll merely send
Bonnie Doon up there to look around a little and hear what my client
has to say for himself, and then I’ll go up a couple of days before
and examine the witnesses personally--I’ll have the time of my life.”

“Yes! And incidentally you’ll waste a week or ten days and end by
paying all the expenses of the trial yourself.--I know you!”

“Well, what else have I got to spend my money on?” retorted Mr. Tutt.
“I might as well spend it on keeping an innocent tramp out of the
electric chair as anything else!”

Now, as Tutt, the lesser, knew that Tutt, the greater, would
eventually do exactly as he chose, the argument then and there died;
and the up-to-date Mr. Bonwright Doon, that extraordinary combination
of law clerk, ambulance-chaser, detective and man-about-town who had
attached himself to the firm was at once despatched to Pottsville, as
Mr. Tutt’s _avant courier_, where he in due course interviewed Skinny
the Tramp in the calaboose, gave Squire Mason the “once-over,”
fraternized with Sheriff Higgins and his fat-boy deputy, Mr. Sam
Bellows, attended a Lodge Meeting of the Sacred Camels of which--as
well as of many similar organizations--he was a member, and after
spending but one night under the hospitable roof of the Phoenix House
won the lasting loyalty and friendship of “Ma” Barrows and of her
daughter Betty, aged nine, whose capacity for peanuts, popcorn,
ice-cream cones and bananas he demonstrated by actual test at Syracuse
to be equal to that of Ringling Bros.’ baby elephant.

Then, having spied out the lay of the land, he returned weighted with
information and wisdom, to make his report to Mr. Tutt,--a report by
no means rose-colored and yet not without hope.

“That town is certainly some hick!” declared the cosmopolitan Mr. Doon
a week later in making his official return. “It’s the variety of
metropolis where they regard an imported cigar as an immorality and
where the height of dissipation is an evening at a Custard Pie Comedy
with Fatty Arbuckle as custardee. It contained no male citizen in
Class 1-A, B or C under the recent draft, but it numbers among its
midst forty-one sacred camels--of which, you may recall, I am one.”

“H’m!” murmured Mr. Tutt, making a mental note.

“Yes!” agreed Bonnie, reading his mind. “Moreover, nothing of moment
has happened there since Artemas Ward gave his celebrated lecture on
‘Fools’ in the P. of H. hall in 1883. Hence this assassination has
naturally excited a heap big local pride. When this tramp-hermit case
comes to the bar there’s going to be such a Roman holiday as the
Mohawk Valley never saw. The rubes are all coming from miles around,
bringing the entire family with ’em and sufficient cold vittles to
last a week, and there’ll be overflow meetings all the way to Utica.”

“No doubt! No doubt!” mused his employer. “But what of my opponents?
What of the _dramatis personæ_ of the contest? And--what of my
client?”

“Your client is a childish nut,” responded Mr. Doon, “who devotes his
life to trying to find the pots of kale at the twin bases of the
rainbow’s arc. From my casual observation I should infer that he was a
trifle less harmless than a cottontail. He naturally asserts he didn’t
do it, and of course maybe he didn’t; but by heck! they’re going to
come awful close to proving it on him.”

“What’s the evidence?” inquired Mr. Tutt, leaning back in his swivel
chair and crossing his Congress shoes on Parker’s New York Criminal
Code which lay open at “Murder” upon his desk.

“All you want,” answered Bonnie cheerfully. “Defendant observed going
towards hermit’s hut a few minutes before the murder, tries to avoid
notice, cry and shot heard, witness bolts to cabin which he reaches in
three minutes and finds hermit dying with gold piece in his hand and a
broken bean-pot on floor beside him, defendant’s pipe left on table,
pursues murderer through woods in general direction of village but
can’t overtake him. Defendant walks into grocery store where all the
boobs are assembled waiting for the weekly shave--at four
o’clock--breathless, excited, blood on his hands--pursuing witness
arrives--also breathless--at four-fifteen and gives the alarm.
Defendant is arrested but when accused refuses to make any statement;
and, if that’s not enough,--his pockets turn out to be full of gold
pieces of the same vintage as the one in the hermit’s hand, and his
shoes fit the marks in the potato patch.--Q.E.D.”

“Did you say this is going to be a trial?” queried Mr. Tutt. “I should
say it was more likely to be an execution.”

“So would I,” assented Bonnie, except for a few minor details. “In the
first place the defendant is a harmless dreamer,--half-feckless fool,
half ‘boob,’ half philosopher and half----” he paused.

“Well?” commented his employer. “Half--what?”

Bonnie still hesitated rather sheepishly.

“Half-gentleman,” he declared in a slightly defiant tone.

Mr. Tutt smiled approvingly.

“Do they know it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes!” answered Bonnie. “But everybody likes a drink of blood
occasionally!”

“What are your other minor details?”

“The prosecutor is a crook--and I’ve got the goods on him.”

“What kind?” asked Mr. Tutt more cheerfully.

“Fifty-seven varieties!” affirmed the ambulance-chaser. “He sticks the
boobs for eighteen per cent on his loans, he sneaks up to Utica once
in three weeks by himself and gets hard boiled, and he looks like the
family portrait of Uncle Jonas Hardscrabble. Besides, although I don’t
know why I think so, I have a feeling he’s got some particular
personal animosity against our client.”

“H’h!” mused Mr. Tutt. “How about the sheriff?”

Bonnie grinned, as with meticulous elegance he removed a cigarette
from a golden case bearing his initials set in diamonds.

“He’s playing the constable in a b’gosh drama up on Broadway. Better
drop in and look him over. And he’s got a posse like the fire hose
company in Old Jed Prouty!”

Mr. Tutt shook his head regretfully.

“I don’t like your setting. The whole country will be
hell-bent-for-conviction on general principles. They’ll want to
vindicate their reputation for law and order and--if they’re in
doubt--instead of acquitting they’ll return a verdict of murder in the
second and rely on executive clemency to remedy any possible
injustice! I know ’em!”

“Mr. Tutt,” replied Bonnie with intense seriousness. “They’re going to
give you the fight of your life!”

Mr. Tutt fumbled in the coffin-like box on his desk for a stogy.

“I surmised as much!” he muttered. “I surmised as much. But--you never
can tell!”

He lit the stogy meditatively and gazed out of the office window
through half-lowered lids.

“You say the prisoner entered the drug store at four o’clock exactly?”

“Yes--that’s absolutely fixed.”

“And his pursuer at fifteen minutes past?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Tutt pursed his lips.

“How far did they have to run?”

“About a mile.”

The old lawyer made a rapid calculation.

“And what time was the murder committed?” he asked suddenly.

“I don’t know,” replied the clerk. “I had no way to find out.”

“Well,” said Mr. Tutt, bringing his feet to the floor with a bang.
“That’s what we’ve got to find out. The whole case turns on it. If our
client fired the shot that killed the hermit and it took the witness
three minutes to reach the shanty and--say--a couple of minutes more
to look around there--then the defendant must have increased his five
minute start to fifteen minutes in a single mile--and if the other man
was running hard I don’t believe he could have done it! No, sir!--He’s
not guilty!”

“And then--there’s the Sacred Camels of King Menelik!” mused Bonnie.
“_And the sheriff is head camel!_”




 II

When Lawyer Ephraim Tutt arrived in Pottsville to conduct the
defense of Skinny the Tramp for the murder of the Hermit of Turkey
Hollow, having been retained to that end by the local order of the
Sacred Camels of King Menelik, he found the whole town up and waiting
for him. Having with his customary equanimity deposited his bag at the
Phoenix House and eaten his dinner, he strolled into the kitchen and,
as was his wont, endeavored to gain some knowledge of local color,
politics and personalities, including that of the client for whose
life he was responsible, by engaging genial “Ma” Best, the
proprietress, in conversation.

“Why, bless your heart, Mr. Tutt!” she assured him after she had wiped
her hands upon her apron and invited him to a seat in the broken-down
rocker beside the wood box, “there ain’t no gentler, kinder soul than
Skinny in the whole county! I’ve known him all his life and his ma
afore him. He’s just a pore, harmless critter that wouldn’t hurt a
fly. Many’s the time I’ve seen him put a baby bird back into the nest
that had fallen out. O’ course he’s kind o’ weak in the upper
story--but he ain’t crazy by a long shock, an’ there’s some things he
knows a lot more about ’n most folks.”

“Will you testify as a witness to his good reputation?” asked Mr.
Tutt.

“Indeed I will!” she declared warmly. “And so’ll half the people in
Pottsville--the children, anyways! Now what would you like for your
supper?--Griddle cakes?”

 * * * * * *

Those of our readers who have journeyed from London down to Epsom on
race day may be able to form some notion of the condition of affairs
in the environs of Pottsville upon the opening morning of the trial of
Skinny the Tramp. Long before the light of the stars had paled before
the coming dawn--e’en before the glowworm had bid the matin to be
near--lanterns flickered in the doorways of distant barns and bobbed
down country roads beneath the bouncing axles of antique buggies and
carry-alls bearing the sleepless inhabitants of the Mohawk Valley to
the legal colosseum of Somerset County. By sunrise Main Street was one
long line of flivvers, while the race track recently occupied by the
Zingara Gipsies was crowded with every variety of antediluvian vehicle
of locomotion,--parked axle to axle.

When at eight o’clock Sheriff Higgins unlocked the door of the court
house the stampede which followed filled every bench in less than
thirty seconds. Competition for the pleasurable and exciting privilege
of sitting upon the jury was keen and the box having been quickly
filled by eleven o’clock, old Judge Tompkins was able to direct the
prosecutor to open his case.

“Silence in the court room!” cautioned the sheriff pompously. “Silence
in the court!--All them folks as wants to go out--git out now--or set
still!”

This invitation being disingenuous and not meant to be taken seriously
since obviously nobody wished to withdraw,--there being, on the
contrary, by actual count three hundred and sixty-one persons packed
against the outside of the door who were anxious to get in,--everybody
accordingly sat still,--except for that slow, uniform, rhythmical
facial movement which now characterizes the entire American nation
while viewing any spectacle. Sheriff Higgins thereupon sat down
heavily himself, by so doing seeming coincidently to elevate Squire
Mason, as upon the other end of the seesaw of public attention. The
trial was on in earnest,--the biggest event in the Mohawk since Abe
Lincoln showed himself on the back platform of his train when he came
through on his way to Washington in 1861. Some of the old codgers who
had seen him then--as little boys--were even sitting in the court room
now,--and more than one commented on the striking resemblance between
him and Lawyer Tutt.

And now Squire Mason, in a new, light blue, broadcloth suit, bowed to
Judge Tompkins, wiped his massive forehead with a parti-colored
handkerchief, took an ostentatious sip from the discolored glass of
water upon the deal table in front of him, replaced it carefully, shot
a defiant and contemptuous glance in the direction where Skinny the
Tramp sat with Mr. Tutt, cleared his throat, and having thus, by
convolutions only somewhat less complicated than those of a Bush
League pitcher but serving much the same purpose, given due notice
that he was about to deliver the ball and that everybody had better
look,--Squire Mason, we say, began his great opening address to the
gentlemen-farmers of the jury who had in their keeping the life of
Skinny the Tramp.

Having first outlined the entire history of the law of homicide
beginning with the well-known Cain-Abel murder in 4000 B.C. he
proceeded, by vocal stages of approximately twenty parasangs each,
through the pages of Holy Writ, not excluding the Apochrypha,--and
referring specifically to both the Judith-Holofernes and the
Jael-Sisera cases,--touched briefly upon the lex talionis, the Salic
law, and the development of the ecclesiastical courts,--and finally
burst into the full flower of rhetoric along with the abolition of
benefit of clergy in 1825. As a symposium of miscellaneous penological
information it was something very fine indeed,--although it had
nothing to do with Skinny the Tramp or the Hermit of Turkey
Hollow,--and the jury, hardened by generations of country sermons--not
only accepted it as their due but drank it all in with rapturous
delight. And at length--as befitted its importance both to the jury
and to him--the Squire came to the matter in hand and that is where
this story really only begins,--the story of the fight for a human
life.

Some time on the afternoon of Saturday, May twenty-seventh last,
declared the Squire, an innocent, helpless old recluse was shot to
death in his shanty in Turkey Hollow. Obviously robbery had been the
motive, since the dead man still clutched in his hand a piece of gold
and upon the floor lay a shattered earthen receptacle which had
doubtless contained others. There were only two persons known to be
anywhere in the neighborhood at the time, James Hawkins, alias Skinny
the Tramp,--the prisoner at the bar,--and Emerson, the lumberman who
had been cutting pea sticks in the Hollow, who had heard the shot and
had hurried at once to the scene of the murder and later given the
alarm. The squire here paused for increased emphasis.

However, he remarked, the murderer, like most murderers fortunately,
had not made his escape without leaving the evidences of his identity
behind him. Not only had he left his pipe, but fresh in the rich earth
of the hermit’s potato patch were the prints of a heavy pair of boots,
the soles of which were thickly studded with nails. He would in due
course exhibit to them an enlarged photograph of said footprints taken
on the very afternoon of the crime by Mr. Pennypacker, who ran the
gallery over to Somerset Corners. Again he paused significantly, and
looked at Skinny the Tramp.

Who, he asked, had worn those fatal boots? Whose guilty feet had left
those telltale prints? The same person, he answered dramatically, who
at four o’clock had stumbled, disheveled, out of breath and
blood-stained, into Colson’s Grocery and called for a bottle of root
beer that Saturday afternoon--and in whose pockets had been discovered
the balance of the gold pieces representing the hermit’s hoard--the
defendant!

A murmur in which were blended astonishment, horror and admiration
arose from the crowded benches, showing that for the first time the
audience realized the gravity of what was going on,--that not only an
innocent man had been killed but that there was sitting within reach
of their fingers the man who had killed him and whom the law now
sought to kill in return. Beneath the table Mr. Tutt patted the knee
of Skinny the Tramp, indicating a confidence which he by no means
felt.

Then the prosecutor proceeded to drive a few more nails in Skinny’s
coffin. When the defendant had been arrested, he informed the jury,
the latter declined to make any statement, either of explanation or of
denial, in his own behalf. He had simply stood mute, giving by his
trembling limbs, his averted eyes and the chalk-like color of his
face, every evidence of a guilty conscience. Then Mason told the jury
with an air of melancholy how he hated to be compelled to prosecute
any human being for a crime--much more for a murder--but that it was
his solemn, sworn duty to do so, just as it would be theirs under the
circumstances to convict; and--called Charlie Emerson to the witness
chair.

If, at this point, the reader should begin to speculate as to what, if
any, is the underlying purpose of this story, let us hasten to state
that its object is to demonstrate that sometimes the trial of an
action in court under our rules of evidence is less a search for the
truth than it is a game of legal chess.

There are two lessons to be drawn from the case of Skinny the Tramp.
The first is, that the trial-lawyer, like the general, must be ready
instantly to change his tactics to meet new situations as they arise,
and that the prosecutor or attorney for the defense who goes into
court with a hidebound theory as to his case is apt to leave his own
hide behind him neatly hammered to the court room wall. He should
realize that the whole actual truth concerning any human happening is
never known, being never learned in court because the witnesses,
well-meaning though they be, are human,--fallible as to observation,
memory and the power to express their recollection of what they think
they originally saw and heard. In a word, the real or absolute truth
is never the legal truth, and as what the legal truth under the
technical rules of procedure is going to turn out to be can rarely be
foreseen it is usually idle to speculate much about it. Therefore, he
should go boldly into court, listen calmly while the witnesses on both
sides tell their widely divergent stories, and then--and not until
then--devise the theory upon which he may excusably demand judgment
for his client or the acquittal of the prisoner. This requires, to be
sure, self-control, ingenuity and audacity; the restraint of a Foch
awaiting the precise moment to counter-attack; the self-trust which
the philosopher Emerson says is the essence of heroism.

But Mr. Tutt knew well that the expected never occurs,--except when
the expected is the unexpected. Thus he always went into a trial with
an entirely open mind,--committed to no hypothesis,--and ready to go
to the mat in a catch-as-catch-can on law or fact, or--to run like a
jack-rabbit. The unknown quantity was both what he dreaded and also
what he gambled on. He was an opportunist of opportunists, on the
alert to snatch victory out of defeat, making shining virtues out of
adroitly concealed necessities, scrambling to his feet with a benign
smile just as he was about to be counted out. The only generality to
which he subscribed was, “You never can tell!” In a word, Mr. Tutt had
a high confidence in his own star, and as he never acknowledged
defeat, nobody ever knew when he was beaten, an adverse verdict being
to him only the starting point for a renewal of the battle in which he
had, at least, an even chance of outwitting his antagonist. He held
that the best preparation for a day in court was a sound sleep the
night before, an hour’s exercise, and a hearty breakfast followed by
what he called a Wheeling Corona-Corona. But not all of us have the
equipoise of Ephraim Tutt.

Now, the other lesson to be deduced from the trial of Skinny the Tramp
was that the best rule in examining witnesses is to have no rule at
all,--which is very much the same thing as “You never can tell!” There
is no more any hard and fast rule for the examination of a witness
than there is for arguing with your stepmother. It “all depends.” The
lawyer who says that you must never let a witness leave the stand
without exhausting his information is just as wide of the mark as he
who claims that the only safe cross-examination is no
cross-examination and that the best cross-examiner is he who does not
cross-examine at all. Yet “no generality is true,--not even this one,”
as the French say; the fact of the matter being that cross-examination
is obviously a dangerous weapon, usually resulting in more harm than
good--but not always, and that every witness presents a new and
special problem which can only be solved by a subtle and perhaps
instinctive appreciation of his psychology. Generally speaking, it is
a pretty safe plan to ask no questions of a witness who has not harmed
your side of the case, for if you cross-examine you may bring out
something entirely unexpected to your great and everlasting detriment.
“Leave well enough alone.” That is the path of prudence--and yet--not
always! But let us not anticipate.

Emerson, the lumberman, like many another man of limited education, in
addition to an astonishingly accurate memory for detail, showed
himself to have a gift for picturesque description which made him a
graphic and convincing witness for the prosecution. He was obviously
unbiased, absolutely clear, positive in all his statements, and
careful,--as both the judge and the prosecutor took pains to instruct
him to be,--to answer only the exact questions put to him.

This, of course, is the regular and proper rule, for if a witness is
permitted to volunteer testimony he is almost certain to violate every
rule of evidence within the first thirty seconds. But in the case of
Emerson there was a particular and vital reason for such a caution on
the part of the prosecutor which was known only to him, namely, that
for tactical reasons it was imperative that certain features of his
testimony should be suppressed.

Now it is the general rule of the law that the lawyer who calls a
witness to the stand in the first place vouches for his integrity and,
in the second, commits himself and his case to the truth of the
proposition of fact that the witness is called to substantiate. But
there is a qualification upon this rule, which is that technically the
lawyer is bound by his own witness only upon those subjects upon which
he sees fit to examine him; and, if later, his adversary brings out
from the same witness new facts upon other subjects, the lawyer who
originally called him may attack the witness as hostile, discredit him
as to those facts, and controvert them if he can.

Yet, underlying all rules is the universal principle of sound ethics
and common decency which hold true both in law and in life as a whole,
that we must conduct ourselves at all times and places as gentlemen
and sportsmen, whether in court or outdoors, until we join the choir
invisible and have no longer any moral problems. In other words, the
lawyer has got to play his game fairly and if, on the one hand, he
calls a witness to prove a certain fact knowing that the witness is
mistaken, or, on the other hand, knowing that his witness is telling
the truth about a certain fact induces the jury or the judge to
believe that the witness is mistaken, that man is a liar, a cad and a
shyster and ought to be disbarred.

Now, Squire Mason was up against a most unfortunate, tantalizing and
exasperating situation with regard to this, his principal witness,
which was that although Emerson had taken only a few minutes to reach
the hermit’s shanty after hearing the fatal shot, and had lingered
there but a minute or two more and had then hurried hot foot to
Pottsville, arriving there within fifteen minutes of the time Skinny
also reached town, which is to say, considering that the murderer had
at least a five minute start, almost at his heels,--nevertheless, and
this is the crux of the case, he was prepared to state definitely and
unequivocally, if asked the time at which he found the hermit dying,
that it was four o’clock exactly--which as we know, and Squire Mason
also perfectly well knew, was the precise moment at which the tramp
entered Colson’s grocery store a full mile away. If this were true,
then James Hawkins, no matter how strongly circumstances pointed
towards him as the murderer, could not be guilty.

Thus, if District Attorney Mason should elicit “the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth” from Emerson,--which was what he was
in duty bound to do and what Emerson had sworn to tell,--the
prosecution would establish a perfect alibi for the defendant from the
lips of its own chief witness. Therefore Mason had resolved to refrain
from asking the lumberman any question bearing upon the time of the
homicide, and in order that no one else might suspect what Emerson
might be able, if questioned, to say upon this important topic, had
slipped him twenty-five dollars and instructed him that the interests
of the public--particularly that of the Mohawk Valley--demanded that
he should absent himself from his customary haunts until he should be
needed at the trial.

Of all this, naturally, Mr. Tutt was wholly ignorant and he had come
to Pottsville with no other defense than the rather shaky argument
that Skinny could not have fired the shot that killed the hermit and,
with only a five minute start, have increased his lead over the
pursuing Emerson to fifteen whole minutes in a single mile. It had,
according to his theory, taken the lumberman only three minutes to
reach the shanty after hearing the shot, and he was out of the place
again and hot on the murderer’s trail in two minutes more. That meant
that he was only five minutes behind when he started in pursuit. Now,
as Mr. Tutt was going to claim, a man could run a mile in less than
ten minutes, and hence it was manifestly impossible that Skinny could
have reached Pottsville fifteen minutes ahead of Emerson--if he were
guilty.

This plausible--but distinctly Tuttian--argument depended, however,
entirely upon the assumption that Emerson did not take more than three
minutes to get to the shanty after hearing the shot, did not stay in
its vicinity for more than a couple more, and had run at top
speed--without pause--all the way to Pottsville,--assumptions that had
little to sustain them, and had small appeal compared with the
overwhelming mass of circumstantial evidence that pointed to the tramp
as the murderer. Mr. Tutt realized full well that his defense was a
flimsy one, since in all probability Emerson had been fully fifteen
minutes behind the fleeing assassin when he had started for the town
and at best had probably done no more than hold his distance, if
indeed he had succeeded in doing that. Yet, although so far as Mr.
Tutt was aware, this ephemeral syllogism was all that stood between
his client and the electric chair, nevertheless, and had he only known
it,--according to Emerson’s full story related privately to
Mason,--Skinny had an iron-clad, copper-fastened, dyed-in-the-wool,
unimpeachable and perfect alibi. It was this full story--the “whole
truth”--that Mason now set himself to conceal in the hope that it
would never be known, for as long as the exact time of the murder
could be left vague and undetermined the alibi would be valueless. So
the shifty Squire carefully omitted to ask the lumberman any question
as to the hour except when it was that he had started in to cut his
pea sticks,--which had been two o’clock.

“There had been a smart shower,” said he, “and some thunder--but the
sun had come out real bright agin. I was about three hundred yards
from where the hermit lived--most through with my job--I’d cut a
hundred sticks and I only wanted a hundred and a half--when I heard a
holler from the direction of the house follered by a shot.”

“Yes.--Go on!” directed Squire Mason ominously.

“I run over there as fast as I could. The door was open. I called out
but got no answer, so I went in. The shanty was hot--for the winders
were closed--and it was sort o’ dim in there--and then I hearn a kind
of cluckin’ sound and I see the hermit lyin’ on the floor--he had
toppled over on his back--and the blood was frothin’ out of his mouth
where he was tryin’ to breathe.”

“Proceed,” said the court. “What else did you observe?”

“I stepped over to where he was lyin’ an’ lifted up his head so’s to
look in his face. I remember there was a great big moth flappin’ like
mad inside the window. It skeart me. Then all of a sudden the hermit
stopped breathin’--the moth flew out the door--and I knew he was
dead--murdered.”

“Do you object to the word ‘murdered,’ Mr. Tutt?” inquired the court.

“No, your Honor,” replied the old lawyer. “The poor man was
undoubtedly murdered.”

“Very well, go on,” continued Judge Tompkins to the witness.

“I threw somethin’ over him and looked ’round for a second or two.
There was a busted bean pot lyin’ under the table and I noticed the
hermit had a gold piece clutched in his fist. The rest of the shanty
looked same as usual.--So I ran right out and listened. I could hear
some one crashing through the brush and I followed after towards the
town, but he beat me to it.”

The court room was as still as the hermit’s death chamber.

“Did you see any footprints in the garden patch?” asked Squire Mason.

“I did. Sure. An’ I showed ’em both to the sheriff and to Mr.
Pennypacker, the photographer.”

“When you went back there with Sheriff Higgins and Mr. Pennypacker was
everything in and around the shanty the same as when you were there
the first time?” asked Mason.

“Just the same. No one else had been there,” declared Emerson.

“That is all!” announced the prosecutor in a tone of triumph. “You may
cross-examine, Mr. Tutt.”

Mr. Tutt did not immediately arise to his feet. It was of course
obvious to him that Mason had refrained from eliciting the time of the
murder from Emerson. Time and place were the inevitable bases of all
testimony. Why had he done so? It was conceivable that the witness was
entirely at sea about the time and hence that his evidence regarding
it, if given, would have been of no value. That was more than
probable, in which case it was natural enough that the district
attorney should not have gone into the matter at all. But there was
also--Mr. Tutt recognized--another possibility, so remote as to be
almost theoretical,--that Emerson did know the time at which he
entered the shanty and that Mason was deliberately holding it back. If
this were so he was doing it for a reason and what reason could there
be?

Mr. Tutt was face to face with one of the greatest dilemmas of his
life: if Emerson knew the time of the shot and it was such as to give
Skinny time to have fired it and reach the village by four o’clock,
that fact, if he brought it out, would be of inestimable damage to
him,--but, if by any chance--oh, could it be!--that the shot was fired
so close to four as to make it unlikely or impossible that Skinny
could have fired it and yet arrive at Colson’s at four, the answer
might acquit him! “The Lady or the Tiger”! Which was it? Mr. Tutt
thought hard. Was Mason concealing the time, or was he luring his
adversary into a trap? For, if Mr. Tutt himself adduced the fact that
the murder occurred, say, at a quarter to four his client would be
doubly damned. A bit of supposedly unexpected evidence elicited on
cross-examination by a party to whom it is harmful is invariably more
damaging than if brought out by the party who has called the witness
in the first place. On the one hand it was a great temptation for Mr.
Tutt to waive the witness from the stand with a nonchalant, “No
questions!” as if his testimony contained nothing damaging to the
defense; but on the other it might be his last chance of proving even
the approximate time of the murder. Sly old dog that he was, he
resolved to try to steal whatever advantage might lie in both courses.
So, without getting up, he waved his hand towards the window and
remarked in the most casual manner possible:

“No questions.--Thank you, Mr. Emerson, for your very vivid word
picture!” And he busied himself with his papers.

Then, as the witness was about to descend from the platform, he looked
up hastily and said in a tone of apology:

“I beg your pardon. I forget whether you happened to mention the hour
at which you visited the shanty the first time.”

Emerson smiled. Without taking his seat he answered:

“No, I didn’t mention it.”

“Do you know?”

“Yes.”

“What time was it?”

Emerson turned to the jury who were leaning forward expectantly.

“When I lifted the hermit’s head in my hand I was lookin’ straight
into the face of that old clock of his that stands between the two
windows in the back--and it was just four o’clock.”

“Thanks,” remarked Mr. Tutt quietly, as if the reply held no
particular significance for his client, whom in fact it might well
save. “No other questions.”

The judge glanced at Squire Mason.

“Have you anything further, Mr. District Attorney?”

“No--I have no further questions,” replied the prosecutor, also as if
the matter was not of the slightest moment.

“May I go, your honor?” asked Emerson.

“Yes,--if these gentlemen are through with you,” smiled Judge
Tompkins.

As neither of the gentlemen wished or dared to ask him the fraction of
another question Mr. Emerson forthwith was given leave to depart upon
his business,--which unbeknown to any of them was to take a job as
foreman in a steam lumber mill seventy miles distant, the train for
which bore him thither later that afternoon.

Mr. Tutt settled back in his chair, a heavenly calm descending upon
his previously agonized spirit. Skinny had been snatched from the very
jaws of death. There was nothing to worry about any longer. Skinny the
Tramp couldn’t have been in two places at once, no matter how strong
the evidence against him might be.

Evidently the Squire was a good bluffer. It required real nerve to be
as placid as all that in the face of such a body blow! The prosecutor
took a sip of water, pushed a mass of papers away from him, leaned
over and picked up a large diagram of the clearing, including the
hermit’s shanty drawn to scale. It had been artistically done and
contained no objectionable matter, the location of the body not having
been marked at all, and the various pieces of furniture appearing only
in outline. Next to the cot-bed the most conspicuous object in the
place had plainly been the hermit’s clock.

Squire Mason handed the diagram to Mr. Tutt with stately bucolic
courtesy.

“Any objection to my puttin’ in this here diagram?” he inquired.

Mr. Tutt smiled as he glanced over it.

“_Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!_” he replied. Then observing the look
of bewilderment upon the prosecutor’s face, he added: “None whatever!
It can be admitted so far as I am concerned, subject, of course, to
correction. Who made it?”

“Miss Gookin,” replied Mason.

“Then I heartily congratulate Miss Gookin on her artistic work!” said
Mr. Tutt, thus making sure of at least one vote, if ever he should run
for governor, from “Toggery Bill,” her father, and gaining high favor
with Mr. Soper, juror Number Eight, who was seeking the lady’s hand in
marriage.

“All right, then--mark it!” said Hezekiah to the stenographer. “Now,
sheriff! Take the stand!”

Just as the prosecution of Skinny the Tramp marked the peak of Squire
Mason’s professional career, so his appearance as a witness at that
same trial was the greatest event in the official experience of
Sheriff Higgins. Being a quiet, home-loving citizen, the Supreme
Exalted Ruler of the Sacred Camels had experienced few of the joys of
publicity and now to be able to ascend the rostrum and, with a real
reporter sent over special from Utiky taking down every word that fell
from his lips, to recount the thrilling narrative of how he had
captured Skinny the Tramp and later secured the evidence against him
through a personal visit to the scene of the homicide while the body
was still warm, to sit elevated high in the court room upon a level
with the judge himself, to feel in his own opinion that he was the
most important figure among the _dramatis personæ_, and that the eyes
and ears of all waited upon him--ah! who that has not had a similar
experience can have the faintest realization of its ecstasy?

Now Sheriff Higgins had looked forward to his coming testimony with
great satisfaction, not only for the reasons just stated, but also
because it would give him an opportunity to indicate publicly what
small potatoes he thought Squire Mason to be. He was in the delightful
position of being able at one and the same time to gratify his vanity,
to do his full duty to the state and also to savor the full venom of
his hatred for an ancient enemy. He proposed to do each in turn and to
do it thoroughly and well, but he was in a somewhat delicate and
paradoxical situation. He had collected the evidence against Skinny,
and was one of the chief witnesses against him; he acknowledged that
logically there was no escape from the conclusion that the tramp was
the guilty party; he was the mainstay of the law in that county and it
was up to him to see that the murderer was convicted; and yet--he
didn’t believe Skinny had done it! No, sir! And the reason was simply
that the tramp wasn’t that kind of a feller, and he and half a dozen
other Sacred Camels were ready--if asked--to say so.

But first, approaching his various phases in order, let us take up the
sheriff’s innocent gratification of his own vanity--in which he
differed not a whit from ninety-nine out of every hundred witnesses.
It is a noticeable thing that once a man finds himself the cynosure of
public attention he feels obliged to picture himself as of heroic
mould. Has any witness since the Creation--we wonder--in any court of
law ever admitted--unless his questioner had the goods on him and he
knew it--that he was in any degree stupid, unscrupulous, negligent,
timid or even slightly impolite or uncultivated? We have never met
one. It cannot be mere boastfulness or vainglory that leads each man,
who kisses the Book and gazes upon the carping features of the jury,
to try and make them believe him the highest type of citizen. He isn’t
and he knows it; and he knows they know he knows it, and yet he will
thrust forth his chest and assume for the nonce to possess every
virtue in the calendar while modestly protesting that there may be
others as good or as brave as he.

We have heard otherwise apparently sensible men confess under oath
without trace of embarrassment, one that he was regarded as the
handsomest man in Rochester, N.Y., another that he was the greatest
mechanical genius in the world, another that he would back his own
opinion on any given subject against that of any ten men and stick to
it even if proven mathematically to be mistaken, another that he had
never told a lie or been guilty of any sort of misleading statement in
his life, another that he had never consciously done anything wrong,
another that he had read every book worth reading in the English
language--and answered categorically “Yes” to some six hundred
separate works such as Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy and Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire--and one, who may have been
telling the truth, that he had never kissed, or been kissed by, a
member of the opposite sex.

The sheriff wasn’t as bad as any of these, but now that it was all
over, his recollection as to his own conduct and demeanor differed
radically from that of his associates at the time. He honestly thought
that he had done things which in fact had been done by others. Anyhow,
someone had done them, so what difference did it make? While,
therefore, the substance of his testimony--as with most witnesses--was
based on fact, the details bore no resemblance whatever to the truth.
As the reader knows, the barber had received Skinny’s surrender, yet
the sheriff unhesitatingly swore that he had reduced him into
possession; the proprietor of the Mohawk Palace Theatre had searched
the tramp and found the twenty five-dollar gold pieces, yet Higgins
managed to give the impression that it was he, and not Mr. Perkins,
who had discovered them; as the reader knows, he had been scared out
of his seven senses when he visited the hermit’s shanty and had
refused to touch the body, and he now was obviously under the firm
impression that he had walked boldly in, uncovered the corpse,
searched the clothes upon it, inventoried the furniture and in general
conducted himself with the brilliant audacity of one of Dumas’ heroes
and the astuteness of Mr. Sherlock Holmes; which, to tell the truth
nobody would have minded in the slightest degree, least of all Mr.
Tutt, for the slab-sided old sheriff was a good old scout, a deacon in
the Baptist congregation, as well as the leading Sacred Camel in that
part of the Mohawk--had it not been for what Squire Mason regarded as
his deliberate act of treachery in giving Skinny a good character--all
of which we will set down in due course. By the time he was called to
the stand Mose Higgins was almost of the same mind as the Sheriff of
Nottingham in the opera of Robin Hood when he said


 “You may search aye,
 But you never will descry
 Such a wonderful man as I!
 . . . . .
 I never yet made one mistake!
 I’d like to--for variety’s sake!”
 . . . . .


So in full glory he described first the pursuit and final capture of
Skinny and how he had found his pockets full of the hermit’s gold--the
pieces all dated 1910--shining, lustrous, five-dollar pieces--of
exactly the right sort to make the mouth of any tramp water; then how
the prisoner had positively declined to say a word in defense or
extenuation; and then, warming to his subject, he gave a vivid picture
of his visit to the shanty just at nightfall and how he had discovered
the hermit lying in his gore, with another--the last!--gold piece
clutched tight in his left hand--also dated 1910, Skinny’s pipe upon
the table, and the marks of fresh footprints in the potato patch. It
was all clear as a bell and he figured largely in his own account as
rather a dashing, nervy sort of sleuth who knew just what to do and
had done it.

Squire Mason, well satisfied, turned him over to Mr. Tutt with a
gesture of “now-go-ahead-and-do-your-damnedest!” Now, Mr. Tutt’s
damnedest in this particular instance was not spectacular, but he
nevertheless elicited more than one fact that played an important part
in the denouement of the trial. He knew that the sheriff was friendly
and also was a Sacred Camel, but he also knew that he was an honest
public officer even if he gave himself a little the best end of it.

“Sheriff Higgins,” said he, approaching obliquely what might be called
the “time element” in the case. “What hour was it when you and your
posse left Pottsville for the scene of the crime?”

The sheriff pondered.

“About quarter past five,” he answered.

_Q._ “And how long did it take you to reach Turkey Hollow?”

_A._ “I should say about half an hour--carryin’ the camera and all.”

_Q._ “Was it light when you reached the shanty?”

Now the darker the sheriff made it the greater impression of bravery
would he create upon his auditors.

_A._ “It was gettin’ along towards six--and there wasn’t much light.
Inside, it was pretty dark!”

_Q._ “Was there a clock in the shanty?”

_A._ “Yes.”

_Q._ “Did you notice the time?”

The sheriff hesitated.

“To tell ye the truth,” he confessed with apparent frankness,
“although I’m positive sure I looked at it--must have!--I didn’t get
no real idee o’ the time.”

That helped Mr. Tutt not a whit, so he veered off on another tack.

_Q._ “Rather a gristly scene, wasn’t it?”

One would have said that Sheriff Higgins thought the examination of
dead bodies a pleasant form of light entertainment.

_A._ “Not partic’ly,” he answered casually.

_Q._ “Did you search the body?”

_A._ “Oh, yes--natur’ly.”

_Q._ “What did you find?”

Sheriff Higgins removed with deliberation from his vest pocket a cheap
memorandum book--evidently a recent acquisition--with cardboard
covers, the edges dyed a bright blue. On the outside in letters of
gigantic script appeared the words “Don’t Forget!”

Running his thumb through the leaves, he opened it at the right place,
adjusted his spectacles, cleared his throat and read in an aggressive,
declamatory tone:

_A._ “One fish hook--one copper cent--one piece of string--two loose
buttons--nine cloves--”

_Q._ “What was that?”

_A._ “Cloves--nine cloves----”

_Q._ “Go on!”

_A._ “--one tobacco pouch--five matches--one pipe--one jackknife--one
piece of gum--one piece wax--one nail--one bottle of whiskey--one
smaller bottle of whiskey--one cork, extra--a handkerchief--eleven
large pins--one pencil end----”

_Q._ “Anything else?”

_A._ “And one hundred dollars in bills.”

_Q._ “Is that all?”

_A._ “Absolutely.”

The sheriff closed his book and returned it to his pocket. Clearly
there was nothing in this catalogue to shed any light on the nature of
the murder, except possibly to indicate that the assassin had been in
too much of a hurry to search his victim, which was not a fact
favorable to the defense. So Mr. Tutt moved on to the potato patch.

Here, as all admitted, the sheriff had done some slick work. He had
carefully measured the footprints and then protected them from
disturbance with a low wire fence. The earth had been soft and squashy
and each one had been as distinct as a fossil in the museum. He had
brought along one of Skinny’s boots and it fitted into each print
exactly! Even the broken down heel was perfectly reproduced. There was
nothing to be done about it so Mr. Tutt handed the sheriff a few large
bouquets to put him in a good humor. Then he asked:

_Q._ “Known my client for some time, have you, sheriff?”

_A._ “Since he was a boy.”

_Q._ “Does he come from around here?”

_A._ “Yes. He was born over Holbrook way.”

_Q._ “Parents living?”

_A._ “No--he’s an orphan.”

_Q._ “Do you know his reputation for honesty, peace and quiet?”

“Look here!” interjected Squire Mason. “You’re makin’ the sheriff your
own witness.”

“I’m perfectly well aware of that!” replied Mr. Tutt calmly.

_A._ “I do.”

_Q._ “What is it?”

The sheriff looked round the room slowly as if to call those present
to corroborate him.

_A._ “There ain’t a quieter, honester, more law-abidin’ citizen in
this here county than Skinny Hawkins,” said he with conviction.

_Q._ “Ever know him to do an unkind act?”

“I object!” shouted the Squire, springing to his feet. “That ain’t
proper and you know it.”

Judge Tompkins smiled indulgently.

“Oh, I’ll give Mr. Tutt some latitude. It’s a serious case!” said he.

_A._ “No,” answered the sheriff. “I never did. He’s got a real kind
heart. He wouldn’t kill a grasshopper!”

Mr. Tutt bowed.

“Thank you kindly, sheriff!” he remarked. “That is all!”

Now Squire Mason had heard this testimony with rising indignation.
Moreover, his rejection as an Abyssinian Brother by the Order of the
Sacred Camels of King Menelik rankled in his bosom. And he did not
propose to let the sheriff get away with anything like that.

“Hold on a minute!” he cried, as Mr. Higgins prepared to descend from
the chair. “You’re sheriff of this county, ain’t you?”

“I be!” retorted the witness. “That is, I was a minute ago an’ if
nothin’ ain’t happened since----”

“It’s your business to get th’ evidence agin’ criminals and convict
’em, ain’t it?” snapped the squire.

“If I think they’re guilty,” answered the sheriff.

“None of your business to try to help ’em, is it?”

“I ain’t tried to help nobody!” shot back the sheriff indignantly.
“I’ve done my duty in this case better’n most!”

“Brave feller, ain’t ye?” said the Squire with scorn.

“Brave as you be, I guess!” countered his adversary.

The judge, Mr. Tutt and the jury were all enjoying the sideshow.

“Ain’t it a fact you was so skeart when you went to the shanty you ran
out and was sick? An’ wouldn’t go back?”

Sheriff Higgins stood up and waved his long arms, almost speechless
with rage.

“It’s a gol-durned lie!” he shouted. “Who told ye that, I’d like to
know?”

“Gentlemen! Gentlemen!” cautioned his honor. “The personal courage of
this officer is not an issue. Call your next witness, Mr. District
Attorney.”

It was true that Mr. Tutt had not scored heavily since he had failed
in his most important attempt--that is, to corroborate through the
sheriff’s testimony the general accuracy of the hermit’s timepiece,
but he had at least secured an official recommendation for Skinny’s
character and he had got Squire Mason quarreling with one of his
principal witnesses. That was a good deal. Incidentally, although it
got by him at the moment, he had gained something else, the importance
of which did not appear until later. Still, nothing made any real
difference, one way or another, so long as he had a perfect alibi for
Skinny safely tucked away in his sleeve. In the feeling of confidence
engendered by this knowledge--and in the delight of having set the
prosecutor at logger heads with the sheriff--Mr. Tutt’s spirits rose
to such a degree that he became positively playful--as light-hearted
as a colt loosed in a clover-field. Alas that legal pride is so often
doomed to fall! That the happiness of one moment in the court room is
so often the despair of the next! Alas for the colt who feels his
oats--for he is sure to kick himself into some sort of a tangle!

Mr. Tutt pleased as Punch with the case, chatted gaily with the jury
and assured Skinny that he would have him out and walking the street
in forty-eight hours--a free man. So elated was he that he gave only
perfunctory attention to the prosecution’s other witnesses, until the
boots worn by the defendant when arrested were put in evidence and Mr.
Pennypacker was called to identify his photographic enlargement of the
footprints in the hermit’s vegetable patch. No, there wasn’t the
shadow of a doubt about it--they were Skinny’s footprints! Yet,
however interesting that fact might seem to the jury, Mr. Tutt rested
secure in the knowledge that his client must have been far away from
there when the hermit had been killed.

Mr. Pennypacker seemed a pleasant sort of person and Mr. Tutt having
nothing better to do proceeded to engage him in agreeable
conversation. What time had he taken the photographs? About six
o’clock. Rather dark? Not particularly, but of course he had had to
make a time exposure. How long? Thirty seconds. How many exposures did
he make? Four. How many plates had he brought with him? A dozen. Did
he use the other plates for anything?

Mr. Pennypacker nodded.

“I photographed the interior of the shanty.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt eagerly.

No photograph could harm him. Nothing could hurt him now! Why had not
Mason put them in evidence?

“Have you the prints with you?”

Mr. Pennypacker affably leaned over and produced them from a package
beside him, and Mr. Tutt saw a chance for one of those grand-stand
plays so dear to the heart of the trial lawyer.

“I offer them in evidence,” said he with a glance at the jury. “I
don’t know why Squire Mason didn’t put them in, but--whatever his
reasons may have been--_I’ll_ put them in--and we’ll see what we can
find! Now”--as the stenographer finished marking the prints--“you say
you took these pictures within two hours of the murder, do you?”

“Yes,” answered Mr. Pennypacker. “But I had to give them a ten minute
exposure!”

Mr. Tutt picked one of them up and glanced at it. Then he suddenly
turned faint. What an everlasting fool he had been! With the utmost
difficulty he controlled himself.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Pennypacker!” he said with a forced smile.
“Thank you very much! They are most excellent and artistic
photographs! That is all!”

Mr. Tutt sank back and gazed dreamily out of the court room window
through which he could see the weather-cock on the Baptist steeple.
Just as he looked at it some draught of air caused it to veer
suddenly. He had a queer feeling in the pit of his stomach. Those
photographs held no interest for him--far from it! Curse them and the
man who had taken them!

For the photographs--although taken at the hour of six--all showed the
hands of the clock as still pointing to four! Either it had been out
of order or had run down before the homicide and hence as evidence of
the hour of the murder was no value whatsoever. Mr. Tutt by putting
the photographs in evidence had destroyed the alibi that his original
question had so unexpectedly established!

One hope only remained. The jury had not yet seen the photographs. Was
it humanly possible that Squire Mason had not noticed the hands of the
clock at all?

Just then Judge Tompkins said pleasantly:

“I think, gentlemen, that this is a good time to adjourn court until
to-morrow morning.”




 III

 “So like an arrow swift he flew
  Shot by an archer strong,
 So did he fly--which brings me to
  The middle of my song!”
                   --John Gilpin.


Somewhere there is a story of terror--done after the manner of Edgar
Allan Poe--in which the hero during a deadly plague from which none
who are stricken ever survive discovers to his horror that in the
night the fatal mark has appeared under his arm, and that he is among
the doomed. His terror and despair are shared by the reader, as well
as his ecstatic relief and joy when he awakes to find that he has been
dreaming. Then for the mere idle satisfaction of disabusing himself of
what are no longer his fears he looks beneath his arm only to find
that the deadly mark is in fact there! The agony of this discovery is
doubly intensified by reason of its following immediately upon a state
of rapturous exaltation.

Highly similar to those of the Spanish victim in the tale in question
were those of Mr. Tutt in discovering that just as, by violating the
canons of experience, he had asked a question by virtue of which he
had created an unforeseen but conclusive alibi for his client, he had
now, by asking another, rendered that alibi of no avail. Never in his
experience had he suffered so staggering a blow. Why had he asked that
fatal question? What imp of Hades had whispered to him that there was
something in those photographs which Mason desired to conceal? It had
been all a trick, a clever “springe to catch a woodcock,” a nicely
baited trap into which he had innocently hopped like an unsuspecting
rabbit. In setting it Mason had not taken a single chance, for, if Mr.
Tutt had not seen fit to offer the photograph in evidence when he did,
the prosecutor, having waited until the conclusion of the defendant’s
case and until Mr. Tutt had attempted to establish his alibi by
proving that Skinny was in Pottsville at four o’clock, would have then
handed them to the jury and shown that in effect the clock by which
Emerson had fixed the hour of the shooting as likewise four was in
effect not a clock at all--and knocked that alibi higher than the
Baptist weathercock. What a fool! What a confounded, inexcusable ass,
idiot and nincompoop he had been! Poor old Mr. Tutt’s theories were
all annihilated at once. This wretched murder case was putting every
principle of tactics upon the everlasting blink. You ought to
cross-examine; you ought not to cross-examine; you ought not to leave
well enough alone; you ought to leave well enough alone. The only
guide left in the legal firmament was that fixed but not particularly
useful pole star of “You never can tell!”

Judge Tompkins arose, bowed and left the bench. Sheriff Higgins let
down the bar of the jury box and the twelve good and true men gathered
up their newspapers and hats and filed after him like a straggling
flock of sheep, down the steps and across Main Street to the Phoenix
House, their temporary place of sojourn while the guests of the People
of the State of New York. Many were the envious glances cast upon
their disappearing backs as the less fortunate agriculturalists
prepared to return to their distant farm houses. Gol ding it! Those
cusses not only had reserved seats for the whole blame show but were
gettin’ paid three dollars a day into the bargain! Gosh darn it all!
Some fellers did hev the luck! Hist back thar, Dobbin, and get yer
tail off’n that shaft!

Then the sheriff returned for Skinny and led him away to the
calaboose, and the crowd which had lingered to observe and comment
upon the defendant’s appearance and demeanor slowly dispersed, leaving
Mr. Tutt alone in the otherwise empty courtroom. Old enough before, he
had aged considerably during the last three minutes of the trial. Mr.
Tutt was suffering from fear--abject fear--of what now seemed the
inevitable fate of his client. In the face of the evidence against him
his mere denial that he had not killed the hermit would go for
nothing. His salvation seemed impossible save through the
rehabilitation of his alibi and, as only one person had heard the
shot, it was only through that person that the time of the homicide
could be established. It now appeared that that same witness who had
testified to Mr. Tutt’s indescribable joy that the hour was four
o’clock, had been looking at the motionless face of a piece of dead
mechanism that might not have been moving for months! Bitterly he
reproached himself that he had not combed Emerson’s recollection until
no item remained undisclosed, for it was possible--just
conceivable--that the witness might have had some other data upon
which to predicate the hour of the crime. If so, it must of necessity
be corroborative of the clock, since Emerson had expressed himself
positively as to the hour. Thus, as Mr. Tutt now perceived--but which
had escaped him at the moment in his excitement over establishing his
alibi--he would have had nothing to lose by pursuing his interrogation
of the witness indefinitely, since he was safe as to the element of
time, and there was nothing else in his testimony which under
cross-examination could be made any more damaging to the defendant
than it already was. Was it too late to recall Emerson to the stand in
the desperate hope that in some other way he might still substantiate
the hour as four o’clock? Perhaps he had looked at his watch. Perhaps
there had been another clock in the shanty. “You never could tell!” At
any rate he must be found and the court’s permission obtained to
recall him to the stand and re-examine him. But it was at best a long,
long chance--a hundred--a thousand!--to-one shot.

It was already a quarter after five and Sam Bellows, the stout under
sheriff, was jingling his keys in the hallway as a polite intimation
to the solitary occupant of the court room that it was time to lock
up. Mr. Tutt pushed his books and papers into a muddled heap and put
on his stovepipe hat. He did not need to study his notes. There was
only one point in the case--and it had got by him! There was only one
hope--no more tangible than the half-suspected presence of a star in
the obscurity of a foggy night.

“Good night, Mr. Tutt!” said Sam amiably as the lawyer walked out with
leaden steps.

“Good night, Mr. Bellows!” responded the old man. Then he paused. “By
the way,” he asked. “Do you know where the witness Charles Emerson
lives?”

Mr. Bellows leaned against the wall and scratched his head politely.

“Well,” he opined, “bein’ he ain’t a married man, he ain’t got no
reg’lar place of residence. Most allus--when it’s goin’--he sleeps
over to the steam sawmill.”

“Well, I’d like very much to see him. Do you know where he may be
found?”

Sam tilted his hat to the back of his thatched skull and then by an
automatic return movement pushed it forward again over his forehead.

“He’s gone off.”

“Gone!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, his heart sinking. “Where?”

“Well, after you gentlemen said you didn’t need him no more yisterday
an’ the jedge said he could go, I hearn him say he was goin’ to take a
job up Orient way. So he beat it--took the train up there last
evenin’.”

“How far is it?” demanded Mr. Tutt desperately.

“’Bout seventy miles.”

“Is there a train to-night?”

“It leaves at four o’clock--when it’s on time. It’s gone!”

Mr. Tutt nervously bit off the end of a stogy.

“Do you know the name of the man for whom he went to work?”

“Nope,” answered Sam--adding more hopefully, “but it’s durn desolate
country an’ there ain’t but one lumber mill anywhere near Orient that
I ever hearn tell of.”

“Thanks!” answered Mr. Tutt shortly. “Where can I hire an automobile?”

Sam pondered deeply. Here was a matter of real moment. Pottsville
boasted no renting garage or jitney, but it would be a catastrophe to
permit a piece of real business to go to Somerset Corners by default,
when the sheriff possessed an “official” motor.

“There ain’t no public motor, but--I reckon the sheriff might
accommodate ye,” ventured Sam eagerly.

“Where is he?”

“Over to the Phoenix House.”

“Would you mind stopping over there and asking him to speak to me?”

Mr. Tutt tendered a handful of stogies to the deputy who thrust one in
his mouth, lit it with a single hand-sweep from the seat of his
abundant being to his hardly less abundant face; waddled across the
street, and almost immediately returned with Mr. Higgins.

“Good evening, sheriff,” said the lawyer. “I want to take a little
trip up to Orient Mills this evening--can you run me up there? Of
course I expect to pay you for it.”

Sheriff Higgins ruminated. He had no right to use the county’s flivver
except on official business, but, in a way, assisting a member of the
bar was official business, and nobody except Sam need ever know.

“I’d like to oblige ye,” he drawled, “but it’s a durn long way--near
seventy-five miles.”

“That’s not so far!” urged Mr. Tutt.

“An’ I couldn’t take money!” added the sheriff. “My motor is an
official motor--paid for by the county.”

“Your time is your own, isn’t it?” argued the lawyer. “Suppose I pay
you fifty dollars for your time?”

A hundred tiny beads upon the sheriff’s bulging forehead testified to
his struggle with temptation.

“We-ell,” he hesitated, “if you promise me not to mention it to
anybody I guess I kin arrange to take ye. Suppose you meet me in
fifteen minutes over behind the railroad station?”

“Anywhere you choose,” agreed Mr. Tutt. “We ought to make it by nine
o’clock.”

“You go out the door first!” cautioned the sheriff. “We might meet
somebody.”

So Mr. Tutt obligingly descended first as requested, followed at a
discreet interval by the two officers of the law. But all this
maneuvering accomplished nothing for the reason that at that very
moment Squire Mason, who had been searching for Higgins, appeared in
the offing of the Phoenix House stable yard and bore swiftly down upon
them. Seeing the two together his worst suspicions were confirmed!

“Hey, sheriff!” he called sharply. “I was lookin’ for you! I want you
to come over to my house this evenin’ and go over the case with me.”

Upon Sheriff Higgins’ cadaverous visage descended an expression of
defiance.

“Huh!” he replied. “I can’t.”

“What’s the matter?” demanded the Squire. “Why can’t you? You ain’t
got nuthin’ of importance to do. Sam can guard the jury, can’t he?”

“Sam kin guard the jury,” answered the sheriff. “But I’ve got a
personal engagement.”

“You ain’t got no personal engagement you’ve a right to let interfere
with your official duties,” retorted Mason. “An’ I need you.”

“Well, I ain’t comin’!” replied Mr. Higgins defiantly. “I guess I have
some right to live, myself!”

“Where you goin’?” snapped the squire.

“I don’t knows that’s any partic’lar part of your business, is it?”
snorted the sheriff bristling.

Mr. Tutt had purposely lingered within earshot. It was conceivable
that in a state of ebullition the doughty Squire might betray some
small but none the less useful trifle of information.

“I’ll find out all right!” asserted the district attorney.

That the Squire could, and would, “find out” was so obvious that the
sheriff perceived that, if he wished to acquire the promised fifty
dollars, it might be wise to pursue a policy of conciliation.

“Look here, Squire,” he said. “There ain’t no sense in gettin’ all het
up about nothin’. Fact is, I’m goin’ to take Mr. Tutt out for a little
run.”

At once Mr. Mason became all suspicion.

“What’s that for?” he queried. “Where you goin’?”

“Up Orient way.”

Instantly Mason sensed treachery. The sheriff was openly selling him
out--working against him! It had been Higgins--he was positive--who
had kept him out of the Sacred Camels. There was some secret bond
between him and Mr. Tutt--some nefarious, corrupt bargain and sale on
foot between them. He knew that Emerson had gone to Orient, but he had
supposed that he alone was cognizant of his witness’ whereabouts.
Evidently the sheriff had tipped off Tutt and purposed going with him
to find Emerson and persuade him to alter or add to his testimony.
This did not suit his book at all. It would never do to have Tutt
interview Emerson--for a variety of reasons. It must be prevented at
any cost and at all hazards. Also, it would be much better if Mr.
Emerson, having given his testimony with due regard to all the
requirements of the rules of evidence, should not return again.

“What car are you proposin’ to use?” demanded the squire.

“One I allus use,” answered Higgins shortly.

“The one you use belongs to the State of New York!” retorted Mason.
“You ain’t got any right to use it except for official business.”

“Well,” replied the sheriff, “what’s the matter with this bein’
official business?”

“What business is it?” roared the Squire. “You dassent tell me and you
know it! If you use that car for joy-ridin’ I’ll complain on ye!”

“You’re a great feller to talk about joy-ridin’!” shouted the sheriff.
“How about that time you borrered it to take you and your missus up to
Utiky?”

“Utiky!” blustered the prosecutor. “I never took any joy-ride to
Utiky! I only----”

And the altercation devolved into a technical dispute carried on with
much acrimony and no less refinement of argument into the delicate
question of whether, if there be a witness residing in a distant place
who may, if interviewed, possibly prove to have information of value
to the People’s side of a case, the official prosecutor may properly
make use of the official automobile ostensibly for the purpose of
holding official converse with said witness while at the same time
seizing the opportunity _en passant_ of purchasing an outfit of spring
clothes, visiting the county fair and going to the circus. This issue,
having been under discussion for several minutes, was still undecided
when Mr. Tutt unexpectedly made his appearance from the direction of
the hotel with a paper in his hand, which he exhibited to the sheriff.

“Excuse me, Squire, for interrupting your conversation,” he
apologized, “but here is a subpena for the witness Emerson which has
just been issued by the court and endorsed by Judge Tompkins,
requiring his attendance to-morrow morning.” He waited a moment.
“There are no trains this evening and if you expect to serve this
process you will be obliged to make use of a motor. Here is fifty
dollars to cover your mileage and expenses. You may return the balance
to me at your convenience.”

Squire Mason, his obstructionary tactics being thus neatly blocked,
could not restrain his impatience. There was only one course for him
to pursue.

“Then,” he exploded, “I’ll go with you!”

“Not much!” answered the sheriff dryly. “I’d be afeard I might be
doin’ somethin’ illegal if I give you a free ride. No, sir! The
county’s ottermobile ain’t goin’ to be used fer no more junkettin’.”

“Then you’ll have to go alone!” remarked the squire malignantly.
“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”

The prosecutor looked triumphantly from Mr. Tutt to the sheriff and
back again. He had ’em there, all right!

“Squire Mason,” said Mr. Tutt, “there is no occasion for our carrying
the warfare of the court room into our personal relations outside. I
have nothing to conceal regarding my desire to recall Mr. Emerson as a
witness. I forgot to ask him an important question; and I am
sufficiently interested in having him found and properly subpenaed to
be anxious to assist in the search. In short, I wish to be informed as
fully as possible about his movements. If you, also, are interested in
the witness and wish to safeguard him from any improper approach on my
part, I suggest that we should both accompany Sheriff Higgins. It is
a fine clear night and I have a pocket full of cigars--of a sort.”

“That’s fair!” nodded the sheriff.

As there did not seem any answer to this proposition, and as Mr. Tutt
had spoken in the friendliest possible manner Squire Mason became
somewhat mollified. He realized that his adversary could hire any one
of several motors at Somerset Corners and, since he possessed
Emerson’s address, could, if he chose, get into touch with him
independently of the sheriff. Emerson might be tricked into saying
something or, worse, blurt out the whole truth! Acquiescence in the
lawyer’s invitation would mean an opportunity to keep track of him and
stop any tampering with the witness at the expense of Mr. Tutt
himself, whose scheme--if that was his scheme--to corrupt the sheriff
and inveigle him into camp at a cost of fifty dollars--as a
preliminary step to debauching the chief witness for the
prosecution--would thus be rendered abortive. Squire Mason began to be
rather pleased not only with the situation but with himself. It was,
as Mr. Tutt said, a fine, clear evening and he was going to have a
free ride and plenty of free smokes. Incidentally, in the tail pocket
of his blue broadcloth cutaway was a small flat flask containing an
amber-colored liquid which might prove valuable as neutralizing the
miasmic vapors of the night.

Accordingly, after a hasty supper at the Phoenix House the three
seated themselves in the official flivver and started merrily off
up-country for Orient Mills. Both prosecutor and sheriff were now
restored to comparative good humor--the former for the reason that he
had Mr. Tutt under his eye and the latter because he had fifty
perfectly good dollars in his pocket and purposed to keep the change
therefrom. Mr. Tutt produced stogies; Mr. Mason produced the flask
aforesaid; Mr. Higgins warmed to reminiscence. The first forty miles,
which they covered quite easily in an hour and a half, was through
level farming country on what is described by the blue book as
“macadam alternating with stretches of dirt in good condition.” But
just as darkness began to gather the highway vanished and gave place
to a narrow rutty road which Mr. Tutt could dimly descry ascending in
tortuous curves indefinitely before them.

“This here is Chick Hill,” announced the sheriff. “Road goes clear
over the shoulder--thirteen hundred feet; but it saves nine miles, an’
Lizzie is good for it.”

“Lizzie” was good for it, although at times it was necessary for her
passengers to relieve her difficulties by getting out, and when at
last the crest was attained she was steaming and gurgling like an
oversized hot-water kettle. Night had fallen; but the dusty road
showed dimly white in the starlight. Then the sheriff shut off the
ignition, put her in low gear, and they plunged down the opposite side
of the incline using the engine as a brake. Mr. Tutt, his knees braced
against the back of the seat in front of him, thought they were never
going to reach level. Even at only ten miles an hour a four-mile coast
at night gives an impression of a rapid descent into a bottomless pit.

On and on they ground at first speed, rousing the innocent sleeping
denizens of the forest with buzzing, groans, whirs and clankings, like
a drunken alarm clock set off in a tin boiler. Mr. Tutt’s excellent
teeth were nearly shaken from his gums, and all three passengers found
themselves violently rubbing their noses to counteract the effect of
the vibration. Then after an unusually steep pitch, during which both
prosecutor and lawyer for the defense clung desperately to each other,
the sheriff suddenly released the clutch and Lizzie shot forward in
silent ecstasy for a hundred yards or so, at the end of which burst
she slowly came to a stop and died.

“Well, we’re down!” ejaculated Sheriff Higgins with evident relief.
“Gosh! Some hill!”

“I think you might officially designate it as a mountain!” replied Mr.
Tutt grimly. “I’ve felt exactly as if I were hanging face down across
a rail fence for the last half hour.”

“I think,” mused Squire Mason, “there’s still somethin’ left at the
bottom of the bottle.”

The sheriff instantly struck a match. There was something at the
bottom of the bottle. Then each lit a stogy and Higgins got out in the
blackness to crank the car. They were in a narrow, heavily-timbered
valley between hills, a sort of natural protected pocket, sheltered
from the wind, cut off from the rest of the world. The tall spruces on
either side of the road raked the stars. Save for the puffing of the
sheriff no sound was audible save the rasping, insistent call of a
whip-poor-will. The chill mist from a near-by swamp or unseen pond
nipped their wrists and cheeks. The sheriff grabbed Lizzie’s handle
firmly and gave it an energetic twist, but the engine answered neither
pish nor tush.

“That’s funny!” remarked the sheriff, giving her another. “Userly she
cranks easy! Maybe she’s cold!”

“Don’t blame her,” shivered the Squire. “Everybody else is!”

The sheriff bent over once more. His gyrations were not visible to the
passengers in the car, but the sounds that he gave forth indicated
extreme violence, followed by utter exhaustion, disgust and profanity.

“Fush-ush-ush!” said Lizzie and then relapsed into a discreet and
mortifying silence.

“Well, I’ll be gol-binged!” panted the sheriff. “I dunno _what’s_ the
matter with her. Acts as if she was sick.”

“She was goin’ all right top of the hill,” encouraged the Squire.

A penetrating odor of gasoline made itself noticeable. In the silence
could be heard the unmistakable sound of something dripping.

“Gee whiz!” gasped the sheriff. “I hope she ain’t sprung a leak!”

He opened the hood and peered vaguely within.

“Hell!” he cried suddenly. “Most burnt my thumb off!”

“What’s the matter with her?” inquired Mr. Mason.

“That’s what I’d like you to tell me!” snapped the sheriff. “All I
know is that her innards seem to be all leakin’ away. I’m standin’
near knee high in a pool of gasoline!”

“Keerful how you light a match,” cautioned the prosecutor. “What are
we goin’ to do?”

“How do I know!” retorted Higgins. “I ain’t no mechanic. I can’t stop
it, ’cause I ain’t got no idee where it is.”

“Can’t you feel for it?” hazarded the squire plaintively.

“She’s bleedin’ to death,” moaned the sheriff. “And no way to stop
her!”

There was a prolonged and painful silence broken only by a determined
trickle from the interior of the hood.

“How far are we from Orient Mills?” asked the Squire.

“Fifteen miles,” replied the sheriff. “I guess you kin walk it in
about five hours.”

Mr. Tutt choked down a chuckle. One thing was certain, that the trial
could not proceed without them. He had nothing to worry about on that
score, and he had plenty of stogies. The attorney gathered his long
limbs together and shrouded his form as best he could with the horse
blanket which he shared with the squire. The sheriff had apparently
surrendered to the inevitable and was poking about aimlessly by the
roadside.

“What you goin’ to do?” demanded the Squire peevishly. “We can’t sit
here all night!”

“Guess you’ll have to wait until someone comes along who can tell
what’s the matter with her,” answered the sheriff. “I’m near froze!”

So were they all. Presently at a safe distance from the car the
sheriff started a tiny blaze which he gradually encouraged with broken
boughs and a couple of fence rails until he had a respectable fire.

“Feels good, don’t it?” he declared, rubbing his hands. “I reckon we
kin pass a comfortable night here.”

“Don’t you know anything about an automobile?” snapped the Squire.
“Seems to me with all the runnin’ around you do you ought to be able
to stop a little leak.”

“Look here!” suddenly roared the sheriff. “It’s all right for you to
stand there and chatter! Go find it yourself! Nobody ast you to come
along, anyhow. Nobody wanted you! You jest butted in!”

“Well, I warn’t goin’ to let you put anythin’ over on me!” shouted
Mason. “I can smell a rat when I see one,” he added significantly,
badly mixing his metaphors in his excitement.

The rest of the colloquy was lost upon Mr. Tutt. For in the distance
he had seen the flicker of a lantern, indubitably coming towards them.
His companions engrossed in their altercation being wholly oblivious,
Mr. Tutt climbed out of the car and strode silently down the road. The
movement of the light, which seemingly was actuated by influences even
more obscurely conflicting than those propounded by Prof. Einstein,
was erratic and puzzling. At times it would remain stationary, then
jump up and down, then swing in a half circle, or occasionally dodge
sideways and, for a moment or so, disappear entirely.

Now, Mr. Tutt was anxious to reach Orient Mills at the earliest moment
possible and he much preferred to arrive there unencumbered by the
presence of Squire Mason. If this light evidenced the presence of any
vehicle of locomotion he purposed to annex, cabbage, corrall, grab,
secure and appropriate it unto himself. Therefore Mr. Tutt having
placed fifty yards between him and the fire, broke into a run. The
light suddenly became distinct and luminous. Yes, it was a
lantern--swinging between wheels of some sort; and while its gyrations
continued he was now able to distinguish furtive movements. Muffled
expletives reached him--a confusion of miscellaneous
noises--stertorous breathing, strainings, the scuffle of irregular
hoof beats.

“Hello, there!” called Mr. Tutt.

The lantern stopped, swaying.

“Hello!” returned a voice. “Hi there, you! Stand still!”

Mr. Tutt hurried towards the lantern, and as he did so it darted
towards the road side.

“Look out!” came the voice in warning. “This here colt ain’t never
been in harness before.”

“Then you better not go any further down the road,” advised Mr. Tutt
approaching the driver who sat upon the minute seat of a wire racing
buggy with his legs thrust along the shafts on either side of the
colt. “Because there’s an automobile right in the middle of it.”

The colt, meanwhile, was frantically side-stepping upon its hind legs.

“Guess I’ll have to turn round--if I kin!” answered the driver
maneuvering with the reins. “He pretty near run away with me up there
a piece.”

“Live far from here?”

“’Bout half a mile.”

“Do you want to earn twenty dollars?”

“I reckon I do--how?”

Mr. Tutt stepped as near the colt as seemed consistent with safety.

“You drive me to Orient Mills--and I’ll give you twenty dollars,” said
he.

The owner of the colt had at last induced him momentarily to stand
still.

“I darsn’t risk it,” he replied with obvious regret. “He ain’t never
been hitched before an’ ’twould be too much for him anyways. Stand
still, you!”

“I’ll give you fifty dollars,” continued Mr. Tutt.

“Where’d you sit?” asked the owner of the colt who was gradually
pulling the animal around.

“On the seat with you.”

Now it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Tutt had realized in advance the
anatomical difficulties presented by his suggestion, he would have
essayed the ride, but he was unfamiliar with racing buggies or their
peculiarities. Accordingly he leaped in where an angel would have
discreetly refused to go. The driver having turned the buggy around
looked over his shoulder.

“Y’ got to hop up mighty spry!” he warned him. “Get yer right upper
leg over the seat and along the shaft and then sort o’ twine yer lower
leg around them wire braces, and grab holt anywheres you can, quick!”

To this day Mr. Tutt is unable to give a coherent explanation either
of how he did as directed or how he stayed put when he got there. He
merely recalls climbing up on the axle of the buggy, grasping the
driver firmly around the waist and sitting sideways on the outer edge
of what seemed like a small frying pan, with one leg along the colt’s
flank and the other twisted between the wire braces beneath the
shafts. He is also firmly convinced that he sat implanted upon the
colt’s tail. But the real miracle is that he retained his stovepipe
hat and triumphantly wore it back to Pottsville. Who shall predicate
what is impossible?

Disregarding the vital consequences to James Hawkins involved, there
was an element of humor in the manner in which Mr. Tutt so blithely
ascended the racing buggy and calmly abandoned the sheriff and the
squire in the very middle of their controversy. He had no intention,
however, of being obliged to share his seat on the frying pan with a
third party.

His equine experiences had been limited; for being of that generation
when the elite of New York belonged to volunteer fire companies and
themselves dragged their diminutive hand pumps and hose wagons through
the streets of the metropolis amid the admiring cheers of the common
herd--when the wild goat browsed undisturbed by the hunter in the
hinterland of Central Park, and bobtailed horse cars at irregular
intervals tinkled from river to river--belonging, we say, to a
generation long since passed away, to wit of Adelina Patti and Jennie
Lind, of Booth and Forrest and Mrs. Vincent, of “Maud S.” and the
“Mary Powell,” of Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher and Barnum’s Trained
Seal--Mr. Tutt, being an urbanite, knew little of the “friend of man”
beyond Shank’s mare. He was ignorant of the character and ways of
colts and of wire buggies, but being a stoic and accustomed to take
things as they came, and the colt and buggy having presented
themselves, he had quite naturally availed himself of them as a matter
of course.

Innocent of the possible consequences, as the gentle Redskin who first
partook of the white men’s beverage, he had accepted the invitation to
share the frying pan without a moment’s hesitation and in that single
instant had passed from the safety of terra firma into the utmost
jeopardy of his life. For he had no sooner entangled his anatomy in
the intricacies of the buggy’s architecture than the colt stood up
straight upon its hind legs and endeavored to paw Cassiopeia from the
zenith. In a twinkling Mr. Tutt found himself with his body horizontal
and his legs pointing skyward like a telescope, at an angle of ninety
degrees. The colt strenuously objected to his presence. Then having
kicked Leda to pieces with his right hoof and trampled upon Orion with
his left the festive animal put his foot through the middle of the
Dipper, swallowed the North Star, turned a half dozen somersaults amid
the constellations, and then by suddenly dropping stiffly to earth
with his four feet close together, shot Mr. Tutt swiftly upward into
the ether adjacent to the Milky Way. For an interminable period of
time the old lawyer hurtled through space, clutching at the nearest
planets and fixed stars, and then, without warning, found himself
projected violently against the rear portions of the colt’s body from
which he rebounded smeared with lather like a billiard ball from a
side cushion, thus receiving a convincing demonstration of Newton’s
Great Law that action and reaction are equal and opposite in
direction.

While profanity would have been inadequate it would have relieved Mr.
Tutt to have indulged in it, but profanity requires breath and he had
none left in his lungs. And then, the colt having decided to abandon
its tests of the Laws of Relativity settled down into a long, leggy
trot that nearly tore Mr. Tutt’s old bones from their sockets, and
plunged forward into the darkness of the abyss.


 “But finding soon a smoother road
  Beneath his well shod feet,
 The snorting beast began to trot
  Which gall’d him in his seat!”


Occasionally the colt would take exception to a shadow and shy
violently into the bushes and, at intervals, it would stop short
without warning with the result that Mr. Tutt’s stovepipe, driver,
buggy, lantern, legs and all the rest of the affair would climb up and
around its posterior, the animate and inanimate becoming inextricably
confused. Then, with a jerk, it would leap forward again and they
would all fall backwards in imminent danger of being dashed against
the road behind them.

Had Mr. Tutt needed to “reduce” he would have become a “reductio ad
absurdum” in the first twenty minutes. Up hill and down they rushed,
gyrating in wide semicircles, the rubber stuttering in agony, deluged
in puddles, pounded by ruts and unseen cavities, numbed and cramped by
their frenzied clinging to the rigid iron.

Several times they flashed by lighted farmhouses where Mr. Tutt would
have stopped--if he could. But the colt having decided to go to Orient
Mills would entertain no other suggestion. It had clearly made up its
mind to cover the fifteen miles in record time and take along Mr. Tutt
with it--willy-nilly.


 “Now let us sing, Long Live the King!
  And Gilpin, Long live he!
 And when he next doth ride abroad,
  May I be there to see!”


As they tore through the night there persisted in Mr. Tutt’s
perfervid, but fast fading, consciousness the vision of a monkey he
had once seen in a circus race clinging in terror to the buckling back
of a leaping greyhound. And like himself it had worn a hat!

Suddenly the colt sprang forward with a burst of speed that made their
former rate seem, by comparison, an amble. From behind them came a
faint palpitation; and a shaft of light shot by over their heads. With
a sensation almost akin to relief Mr. Tutt realized that Lizzie had
come to life.

“Hr-rr-k! H-rr-k! H-rr-rr-rr-k!”

The colt hurled itself into the traces resolved to be overtaken by no
mere flivver. In desperation Mr. Tutt grasped the animal’s tail with
both hands firmly near the root, thus reducing the radius of the
circle through which he was gyrating by virtue of centrifugal force.

At times--when the road ascended--Lizzie dropped momentarily behind
and the light of her eyes dimmed; but at others--notably, down
hill--she pressed hard upon their heels to the imminent danger of Mr.
Tutt’s coat tails. Since the colt would neither stop nor allow Lizzie
to pass, they continued thus in company without slackening speed until
the road emerged from the woods into the open and, racing into the
village neck and neck, they came to a stop in front of the post office
at Orient Center.

“Well,” remarked the colt’s owner shortly. “Here y’ are!”

Mr. Tutt, however, was not sure whether he--all of him, at any
rate--was there or not, for from his waist down he had lost all power
of sensation. With the sheriff’s assistance he untied his legs and
ruefully rubbed the small of his back.

“Thought y’d leave us, did ye?” taunted the Squire.

“This gentleman offered me a lift and I accepted his invitation,”
explained the lawyer, as he counted out fifty dollars by the light of
the lantern. “How did you manage to repair the automobile?”

“Oh, she come-to finally,” replied the sheriff blandly. “Y’ see
coastin’ so long down hill thetaway flooded her carburetor and she
kep’ on leakin’ until she was empty and then she jest naturally dried
up and when the Squire gave her a crank she started right up.”

Mr. Tutt examined his timepiece and discovered to his astonishment
that it was only half after eleven. It seemed to him as if he had been
traveling all night. The owner of the colt having pocketed his money
wheeled the buggy and drove off.

“Everybody’s asleep in this hick town,” announced the sheriff. “Guess
we’d better run over to the mill.”

So they climbed back into the car and drove on to Orient Mills. Here
all was dark but, by pounding on the door of the house nearest the
office, they roused a time-keeper who said that Charlie Emerson had
gone to work the day before; he thought he was lodging at a house
about a quarter of a mile below the dam on a side road--they would
know it by a white birch. Lizzie having somewhat reluctantly consented
to proceed, they passed another half hour trying to find Mr. Emerson’s
place of abode. But every house below the dam proved to have a white
birch in its immediate vicinity and, as he had no other guide, the
sheriff aroused the irate occupants of each in turn until he
eventually discovered the particular tree in question--which on
examination proved to be a beech. It made no difference to Mr. Tutt
what kind of a tree it was. He had accomplished his purpose. He had
found his witness, and he would be in a position to rectify and atone
for any mistake he might have made. All his weariness passed from him,
his bones ached no longer, he heard no more the rushing of the wind
past his ears nor smelt the aroma of his flying steed! His
experience--agonizing as it had been--had been a small price to pay
for the result attained.

The moon had set and the small white house stood silent and ghostly as
a tomb against the blackness of the grove behind it. The sheriff
climbed out once more and descended to the side door, which he kicked
violently. Since this elicited no response he then walked around to
the front and thumped loudly upon the front windows. At length a
candle flickered somewhere and a head emerged from the second story.

“Hello there!” called up the sheriff. “Does Charlie Emerson live
here?”

There followed a moment during which the head appeared to be adjusting
itself to the idea so irrelevantly interjected into it. Then a deep
voice--whether masculine or feminine none of them could
determine--said:

“You mean the feller that come here from Pottsville? If ye do, he was
here yesterday and hired a room but he went away agin and he ain’t
never come back! I ain’t got no idee where he is.”

Then Mr. Tutt lifted up his voice and called down the punishment of
Heaven upon the missing witness and upon himself as nothing less than
a poor old fool! Mason could scarce conceal his glee, even in the
darkness. Now, of a surety, Hawkins would go to the electric chair!
Mr. Tutt began to suspect that Mason had surreptitiously telephoned up
to the mills and arranged to have Emerson enticed away. But he
dismissed that possibility; for Mason had not had time for anything
like that. Moreover it would have come pretty close to being a
crime--and, while Mason might be a shyster he certainly would not be
guilty of anything so unprofessional as that! No, it was fate!

“Well,” said the Squire pleasantly, “what shall we do now?”

“It’s two o’clock!” warned the sheriff. “If you want to get back to
breakfast we’d better be gettin’ along. I ain’t goin’ over Chick Hill
agin’ to-night. I’m goin’ round by Humphrey Falls.”

“When is the next train?” asked Mr. Tutt.

“One o’clock to-morrow afternoon,” said the sheriff. “I told you this
was a hick town!”

Mr. Tutt without further discussion opened the door and re-entered the
car. The jig was up. He could do no more. There was only one course to
pursue; leave the subpena to Orient and go on with the trial, meantime
keeping in touch with the manager of the mills. If Emerson returned to
work in the morning he could be subpenaed and delivered upon the one
o’clock train for Pottsville. If he did not turn up Mr. Tutt could
wait until the last minute, lay the whole matter before the court and
appeal to its mercy for a sufficiently long adjournment to enable
Emerson to be found.

Dawn had flushed the hill summits along the Mohawk Valley before a
bucking and recalcitrant Lizzie, driven by an exhausted sheriff and
carrying two cramped figures representing both sides of the bar in the
great case of People vs. Hawkins, slithered into Pottsville. The only
light visible gleamed from the kitchen window of the Phoenix House
where “Ma” Best, like the virtuous woman of Holy Writ, was preparing
breakfast for twelve slumbering jurors and the other transient
participants in the proceeding. Higgins ran Lizzie up to the back
door, climbed down and shook Mr. Tutt by the shoulder.

“Hi!” he grunted. “Here we be back again!”

“Yes, your honor!” muttered Mr. Tutt who had been dreaming of special
demurrers and cross-interrogatories. “Exactly so!”

“Wake up!” ordered the sheriff. “This ain’t no Pullman!”

Mr. Tutt slowly came to himself and the pains of Hell got hold upon
him. His hands and feet were without feeling, but otherwise every bone
in his body, every muscle, every tendon shrieked with agony.
Simultaneously the Squire regained a similarly painful consciousness.

“Squire,” remarked Mr. Tutt with a grin, “we have at least comported
ourselves as lawyers, gentlemen and sportsmen.”

“So far as the sport goes,” returned the squire ruefully, “I could ha’
got ’long without it.”

Mrs. Best, startled by this untoward matutinal disturbance, now
appeared in the doorway, the light streaming from behind her, and
giving her somewhat the effect of a stout angel descending in a burst
of glory from a culinary heaven.

“Why Squire Mason!” she exclaimed, “and Mr. Tutt! What on earth are
you two doin’ up at his hour of the mornin’?”

Indeed an angel she seemed to the three spent and weary men.

“Where you been? Don’t you want a cup of coffee?”

“Madam,” replied Mr. Tutt, with a bow of his old stovepipe which swept
the ground, “sweeter words ne’er fell on mortal ear!”

Squire Mason had hurried inside to the more grateful atmosphere
surrounding the kitchen stove. The stars were blinking feebly above
the rival steeples of the local Methodists and Baptists, and the
chimney of the Phoenix House cook-shed glowed with a grayish,
unearthly pink.

“Well, Mr. Tutt,” whispered the sheriff as he made sure the prosecutor
had closed the door after him. “I did the best I could for ye! I give
ye the best chance I could--but ’twarn’t no use!”

“How’s that?” inquired Mr. Tutt, fully coming to life for the first
time. “What do you mean?”

“I mean,” explained the officer of the law, “that I know’s well as you
do that there’s suthin’ phony ’bout this feller Emerson. Squire’s
never let me say a word to him--ax him a single question! So to-night
when we got to the top of Chick Hill an’ I seen a light on the road
ahead I made up my mind to give you a chance to go on alone and have
a talk with Emerson all by yourself.”

“Eh!” murmured the astounded lawyer.

“So I pulled out the choke pin and flooded the carburetor and she
stopped sure enough--and Mason would ha’ been there yet, if the durned
cuss hadn’t gone over all by himself when I wasn’t lookin’ and give
her a yank and she started up.”

In the half light of the coming dawn the bony hand of Mr. Tutt sought
the icy one of Sheriff Higgins.

“Thank you!” said he. “It’s too bad! I’m afraid this means Hawkins
will be convicted.”

“I’m feared it does! If you can’t find Emerson,” returned the sheriff
solemnly. “--an’ I ain’t sure findin’ him will do any good either! But
I kinder have a feelin’ that if you’d ha’ gone after him in
cross-examination you’d ha’ got suthin’ more’n ye did. You _got_ to
find him!”

“Why do you say that?” asked Mr. Tutt curiously, for, so far, his
alibi stood a good one. “Didn’t I prove by him that the murder took
place at four o’clock, when everybody knows that Skinny was in
Pottsville at that hour?”

“Yes,” assented Higgins. “But y’see just between ourselves I happen to
know that the clock he told the time by was stopped. I seen it myself
when I went into the shanty that afternoon.”

“Then why do you think it would do me any good to find Emerson?” Mr.
Tutt pressed him.

The sheriff hesitated. A couple of long antennæ had shot up from
behind the hills surrounding Turkey Hollow and were gilding the
weather cock on the Baptist steeple.

“’Cause,” he replied with conviction, “I believe he knows more’n he’s
been asked. I can’t tell you why I think so, but I do. Mebbe I’m all
wrong. But”--and he put his lips close to the lid of Mr. Tutt’s
stovepipe hat--“I don’t believe--no matter how strong the evidence is
agin’ him--that Skinny ever killed the hermit. He ain’t that kind. An’
what’s more I believe the Squire knows it.”

“That’s a pretty strong accusation to make against the district
attorney of your county!” exclaimed Mr. Tutt with feigned severity.

“I know it,” admitted the sheriff. “That don’t make no difference.
He’s a bad actor! But Skinny ain’t no murderer! You kin bet on it!”

“Have you observed anything in the evidence that tends to support your
opinion?” returned Mr. Tutt.

“Well,” answered the sheriff. “It’s a gol-durned funny thing that
Skinny had exactly one hundred dollars in gold when I arrested him and
the hermit had five new twenty-dollar bills--just the same amount--on
his body.”

“That,” exclaimed Mr. Tutt, “is a coincidence which had entirely
escaped my attention!”

“But your only chance to get him off is by findin’ Emerson!” asserted
Higgins with emphasis.

“But how can I do it?” demanded Mr. Tutt.

The sheriff shook his head and spat with precision at a dandelion.

“Durn if I know!” he answered helplessly. “And I’m a camel, at that!”
he added with seeming irrelevance.

Now one of Mr. Tutt’s axioms of conduct was always to act on
impulse--and to trust instinct rather than reason; for he held impulse
to be the voice of conscience and instinct that of inherited
subconscious experience. He was wont to claim that the observation of
the human race concentrated in legends, maxims, saws and proverbs was
just as likely to be correct as the deductions of modern science,--and
that he for one, until the contrary was demonstrated to his
satisfaction, purposed to go on believing that the moon was made of
green cheese. Hence Higgins’ voluntary statement to the effect that he
felt--although he could not tell why--that there was a nigger in the
legal woodpile somewhere and that Emerson was Skinny’s only hope,
induced a new resolution on Mr. Tutt’s part to find him, if it were
humanly possible; and so before court opened he sent to New York a
hurry call for help in the shape of a telegram as follows:


 “Samuel Tutt, Esq.,
  “c/o Tutt & Tutt,
   “Attorneys-at-Law,
    “61 Broadway, New York.

 “Case going badly. Need assistance. Come at once, bring Bonnie Doon
 and four detectives--real ones.--Regards.

                                                       “E. Tutt.”


In addition to which he pondered long upon the curious fact that a man
who presumably had been murdered for his money should have a hundred
dollars in new bills in his pocket--the precise sum, only in another
form of specie, represented by the loot taken from his alleged slayer.




 IV

 “Is not the winding up of witnesses,
 And nicking, more than half the business?
 For witnesses, like watches, go
 Just as they’re set, too fast or slow;
 And where in conscience, they’re strait-lac’d,
 ’Tis ten to one that side is cast.”
        Butler. Hudibras Pt. II. Canto I, 1.51


Just as the scientist reconstructs the dinosaur from a fragment of
bone, so Ephraim Tutt,--ex pede Herculem, as it were,--by virtue of
the coincidence of the hundred dollars found upon the hermit’s body
and the equivalent amount of gold discovered upon Skinny the Tramp,
built up something which, while not exactly a defense, was at least a
bomb to hurl into his enemy’s camp. Defense, alas! there apparently
was none worth making. The case hung upon the question of whether
Emerson, if found, could shed any additional light upon the hour of
the murder. If he could not be found, then Skinny would go to the
chair. If he did appear--well, there was merely a possibility of
escape--that was all.

Ten o’clock came, once more the gong rang, and the gladiators stumbled
from their respective corners into the legal ring for the final round.
Mr. Tutt, fully cognizant of his desperate plight, nerved himself for
the encounter, and wary, resourceful and suave, although he had lost
all hope of acquitting Skinny on his alibi, exhibited all his
customary confidence. Neither did Squire Mason show any loss of
vitality or aplomb as a result of his trip to Orient Mills the night
before. Indeed, both came into court none the worse for wear and
wholly ready for the fray.

At the very opening of the day’s proceedings, a question of tactics
presented itself. The photographs of the interior of the shanty, while
in evidence, had not as yet been shown to the jury. There wasn’t the
slightest doubt but that, of course, Squire Mason was aware of the
simple mechanical fact that the hermit’s clock had run down. He might
even have it hidden somewhere in an ante-room ready to produce at the
proper psychological moment, to prove that the clock was broken
or--horrible thought!--that it had no works at all! It might be merely
a face!

The foxy old hayseed was probably going to wait until the defense had
called all its witnesses to establish Hawkins’ presence at Colson’s
Grocery at four o’clock, and then blandly trot out the clock itself
for the inspection of the jury, who would thus be enabled to see with
their own eyes that it was entirely useless as evidence. Adopting a
military simile, he was evidently intending to permit his enemy to
capture a redoubt and then press an electric button and blow the
redoubt and the enemy both to atoms. That was obviously what he ought
to do as a matter of tactics, what any skilful prosecutor would do,
what Mr. Tutt would have done in his place. It could therefore be
pretty safely assumed that he would do it.

Now then, would it be better for Mr. Tutt boldly to hand the
photograph to the jury and bring out the fact that the clock was a
stopped clock himself, as if it were so obvious as to be really of no
importance and--trust to luck? Or would it be better--assuming that he
had correctly diagnosed Squire Mason’s intentions--to keep the thing
out of the jury’s hands as long as possible and delay the discovery
until there was no longer any hope of a change in the strategical
situation. The photograph was bound to be a bombshell some time or
other, and the longer it was held back the worse would be the
explosion. Still--! Mr. Tutt had been taught several painful lessons
during the last few days. Why bring out an unfavorable fact before it
was necessary,--simply to reduce its ultimate dramatic effect if
eventually proved? Why explode a mine under one’s own works, so long
as there was the remotest chance--even one in a million--that the
works might be held? After all, you never could tell!

These somewhat confused ratiocinations flashed through Mr. Tutt’s
brain while the roll of the jury was being called, and by the time the
twelfth had answered to his name, the lawyer had made up his mind to
leave what was--for the time being--well enough alone, and to hold
back the photograph as long as possible, to trust in his star and in
his genius for the unexpected and improbable.

The clerk sat down and the sheriff rapped for order.

“Proceed, gentlemen!” directed Judge Tompkins.

“Your honor,” announced Squire Mason with the air of a Stephen A.
Douglas, “I have studied carefully the facts evidenced by The People’s
witnesses and I have decided to close my case. We have proven the
corpus delicti, the presence of the defendant at the scene of the
crime, and the proceeds of it upon his person, thus showing his
motive, and by many other conclusive items of circumstantial evidence,
have established beyond peradventure that he is the murderer. There is
no need to pile Ossa upon Helion. As the saying is, ‘Enough is
enough.’--The People rest!--Let us hear what the defense has to say!”

Squire Mason looked pointedly at the foreman, who nodded slightly as
if in approval of the prosecutor’s sentiments. Quite right. Enough was
enough, and there was more than enough here. Anybody who had any doubt
as to who had killed the hermit must be a blamed fool! All eyes turned
irresistibly to Mr. Tutt, as the old lawyer, accepting the gage of
battle, elevated himself by easy stages ceilingward like a retarded
Jack in the Box.

“I move,” said he, “that your honor direct a verdict of acquittal upon
the ground that there is no evidence sufficient to connect the
defendant with the crime charged. Surely no court would permit a jury
to take away a man’s life on circumstantial evidence of such an
inconclusive character as has been introduced here!”

Judge Tompkins shook his head.

“I shall deny your motion, Mr. Tutt. There is, to my mind, abundant
evidence, which if uncontradicted or unexplained, would warrant the
jury in finding a verdict of guilty. Circumstantial evidence is often
the most convincing evidence.”

The old lawyer bowed.

“I most respectfully and with the greatest deference to your honor’s
judgment, except to your honor’s ruling.--Will your honor kindly
instruct the jury that in denying my motion you do not indicate any
personal opinion on your own part as to the defendant’s guilt or
innocence and that your ruling is merely to the effect that there is
enough evidence to put us on our defense?”

“That is so, gentlemen.--Proceed, Mr. Tutt.”

Judge Tompkins settled back in his chair expectantly. It was, so far
as he could now see, a conclusive case of circumstantial evidence and
he was anxious to learn how Mr. Tutt proposed to rebut it. He liked
the old lawyer and watched him almost affectionately as the latter
smilingly glanced over the rows of uplifted faces before him.

Now, Mr. Tutt always proceeded upon the theory that though a man might
be down he was never out--at any rate until the verdict was rendered
and the highest court in the state had sustained it; and following his
usual tactics, instead of supinely awaiting his enemy’s attack, he
boldly assumed the offensive and crashed through the hostile
earthworks and entanglements without regard to the fact that he was
leaving himself open to the danger of being cut off in the rear. In
other words, although he knew that the most superficial examination of
the photographs of the shanty’s interior would show that the hermit’s
clock had stopped and that consequently his claim that the murder had
occurred at four o’clock when Skinny was a full mile distant was
baseless, he nevertheless plunged right ahead as if the fact of the
clock having stopped was never going to be discovered at all.
Furthermore, he had the audacity to attack the Squire’s good faith and
general honesty and so pave a way for the possible future suggestion
that maybe the old fox had fixed the clock himself when he had gone to
the hermit’s shanty on the afternoon of the homicide,--for the very
purpose of destroying Skinny’s perfectly good alibi! And he did this
all on the basis of the hundred dollars in bills found in the hermit’s
vest pocket!

First, said he, his client was known to be one of the most gentle and
peaceable of human beings.

Second, he had an absolutely good alibi--as he was far away from
Turkey Hollow at four o’clock when, as the jury already knew, the
murder had taken place.

Third, the prosecution was not brought in good faith since this had
been perfectly well known to Squire Mason from the beginning. This was
the first time the defendant had ever heard the evidence against him.
He had never been given any opportunity whatever to show--as he could
have done with the utmost ease--that he could not possibly be the
person who committed the homicide. Had Squire Mason called before the
Grand Jury the witnesses whom he, Mr. Tutt, was about to call before
them this indictment would never have been found, for they would have
demonstrated with mathematical certainty that at the precise hour this
unfortunate man met his death James Hawkins was a mile away.

At this several members of the jury looked inquiringly towards Squire
Mason, who sniffed contemptuously and glowered at Mr. Tutt with hardly
concealed malevolence. An alibi, pointed out the lawyer, was the best
possible defense, because it was the only defense that proved
conclusively that the defendant must be absolutely innocent--for
nobody could be in two places at the same time. Now, while it might be
true that Hawkins at some time or another had had on a pair of boots
with soles like the prints in the potato patch, (1) it had not been
shown when in fact the prints had been made, whereas (2) he--Mr.
Tutt--would clearly, absolutely, irrefutably, legally, morally and in
every other way, prove, demonstrate, and substantiate that, even if
Hawkins had been near the shanty that afternoon, he must have left
there long enough before the murder to walk from Turkey Hollow to
Pottsville and arrive there at four o’clock. All this Mr. Tutt got off
exultantly, triumphantly, grandiloquently, in his best “whoop-la”
manner, keeping one eye meanwhile upon his antagonist to see how he
would take it.

“Why?” he demanded in tones like those of Amfortas in the Chapel Scene
of Parsifal, “why _had_ Squire Mason concealed from the Grand
Jury--and, he might add, from his listeners themselves--this all
important and controlling fact? Was it not the duty of the public
prosecutor to conserve the rights of every accused? Was not, in fact,
a district attorney who deliberately withheld vital information--which
in truth would conclusively establish a prisoner’s innocence--from the
public tribunal of which he was the adviser, and sought to secure the
prisoner’s conviction of crime--knowing him to be blameless--was not
such a man guilty of malfeasance in office--if not of worse things?
Was he not a thief, liar, poltroon, rascal, knave, rogue, scoundrel,
scamp, scalawag, miscreant, villain, crook, cad, shyster, trickster,
renegade, caitiff, rapscallion,--no better than a murderer himself?
Eh, what? Wasn’t he? Let them answer to their own souls!” And as
Squire Mason took all this dose with only a feeble “I protest--I
object!” turning white meanwhile, it dawned upon Mr. Tutt that
possibly what he said was true, and that not only Mason _was_ a scamp,
etc., etc., but that mayhap, after all, the alibi _was_ a good
one,--if only it could be proved to be so! Look at him! Pale,
shrinking, guilt pictured in every feature!

“Bang!” went Judge Tompkins’ gavel.

“Mr. Tutt!” interrupted his honor with severity. “Your language is
highly unbecoming. Your attack upon the prosecutor of this
county--made in your opening without the slightest evidence to support
your accusations--is most improper. At the right time I shall instruct
the jury how to deal with it. You will kindly confine yourself to what
you intend to prove----”

“But I do intend to prove it!” replied Mr. Tutt in a voice trembling
with carefully simulated resentment and indignation, now fully
satisfied not only that he had got Mason’s number but that the alibi
was really good. “I intend to prove it! And that this man Mason is
what I have stigmatized him as being.”

“We are not trying Squire Mason!” retorted his honor hotly. “Any more
than we are trying you. Proceed and confine yourself to the facts
which you expect to establish.”

Now, Mr. Tutt had “felt his way along,” as he would have said, and,
having felt it a certain distance, he had gradually become convinced
that he had inadvertently stumbled upon a great truth. There was
nothing to account for this except whatever significance might be
attached to the squire’s demeanor. As the diplomats say, the situation
had not changed. Nevertheless, into the old lawyer’s veins there oozed
a celestial ichor which put him all aglow,--made him the same old
“battling Tutt” of his police court days fifty years before. It may
have been only a subtle sensitiveness telling him that, if the Squire
were agitated, to that extent at least should he himself be confident,
if the Squire were depressed by so much should he be elated, but it
was probably something deeper than that and akin to the instinct of
the sailor who in the midst of the tempest knows that the storm is
nearly over,--a lightening of the spiritual barometer, a consciousness
of the stealthy approach of dawn when the night seems darkest.

So Mr. Tutt, having charged the Squire with being every kind of a
crook set forth as a synonym for the word rascal in the Century
Dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, and all the other handbooks used by
sterile authors, boldly alleged that at the proper time he would show
him fully up, have him disbarred and mayhap cast into prison, and,
having described exactly what he purposed proving and what he knew he
could prove, decided to take a chance and guess a little as to what he
was not by any means so sure of.

He had, he declared, proven by his cross-examination of the witness
Emerson that the murder was committed at exactly four o’clock,--a fact
which Squire Mason had deliberately attempted to conceal from them.
Now why had the wily and unscrupulous prosecutor sought to leave the
hour of the crime in doubt? Obviously because he knew that only by so
doing could he hope to convict the defendant. And then Mr. Tutt--borne
along on the wings of a divine afflatus coming whence he knew not--and
for no reason save that he felt “full of beans”--decided to try to
throw a scare into the district attorney on the chance of his really
having something on his conscience.

If, he threatened, after he. Tutt, should have established to their
satisfaction that Hawkins was in Pottsville at four o’clock the
prosecutor should then in desperation turn about and for the purpose
of invalidating the alibi seek to attack his own witness’ testimony to
the effect that four o’clock was the hour of the murder, then, oh
then! he would a tale unfold that would harrow up their souls, freeze
their adolescent blood, and make their hair stand on end, etc.;--for
Mr. Tutt, emboldened by the angel who at times whispered in his right
ear or the little devil that at others murmured in his left had in the
twinkling of an eye formed the sudden and definite resolution to
accuse Squire Higgins,--if necessary,--of having deliberately stopped
and turned back the hands of the hermit’s clock himself. Of course, if
one stopped to think it over, it was a ridiculous supposition, but Mr.
Tutt knew that no argument is too absurd to advance before a jury with
some hope of success; and this wasn’t even an argument, it was merely
an excuse for an accusation. He might get away with it,--“You never
could tell!”

So Mr. Tutt, having concluded his address with an encomium upon the
virtues of Skinny the Tramp in which he ranked him well up among the
heroes of Plutarch and the Fathers of the Republic, proceeded to
summon to the stand eight worthy inhabitants of Pottsville, each and
every one of whom swore positively and convincingly that on the
afternoon of the murder Skinny had entered the door of Colson’s
grocery store almost exactly at four o’clock, and that their reason
for knowing this to be so was that just as Skinny came in, the
barber,--someone having called attention to the fact that it was time
for him to open up,--had got up and gone out. All were accordingly
able to swear positively to the time and to give a natural and
convincing reason for their ability to do so.

But the calling of these witnesses to the stand gave Squire Mason the
opportunity to drive in on cross-examination all the most damning
facts about Skinny’s appearance and admissions at the time.

Hadn’t the tramp’s hands when he came in, he shouted, been smeared
with blood? Wasn’t he panting, exhausted, excited? Didn’t he try to
run away as soon as the news of the murder reached the town? Didn’t
they find his pockets full of gold pieces--of the same date as the one
in the dead hermit’s hand? Didn’t they recognize his pipe that he had
left on the shanty table? With one accord they all admitted it.

Then Squire Mason went a step further and to everybody’s astonishment
demonstrated that he possessed a very ingenious fancy. For he
developed a romantic theory about a rainbow and a crock of gold which
came nearer to being true than he had any idea of.

They’d all known Skinny the Tramp quite some time, hadn’t they? Ever
since he was a young feller? Sure--you bet! Ever notice anythin’ he
said partic’ly--what he meant was, did Skinny seem to have any
partic’lar idee he was always harpin’ on. Well,--if they didn’t
understand what he was drivin’ at--did Skinny ever say anythin’ in
their hearin’ about rainbows? Oh, sure! He was always--ever sence he
was a boy--talkin’ about tryin’ to find a pot of gold at the foot of a
rainbow.--Sure! He was always talkin’ about that! They hadn’t grasped
the purport of the Squire’s question. Why, there was one time Skinny
had harangued a big crowd on that subject for over half an hour down
to Somerset Corners--night of a lodge meetin’.

Then Squire Mason, lowering his voice to an intense tremulo, would ask
each witness whether he had not noticed on the afternoon of the
murder, just after the shower, a rainbow, one of whose arches rested
in Turkey Hollow! And when any one of them confessed that he had done
so--as did in fact several--the prosecutor looked hard at Skinny--and
the audience sucked in its breath and felt a delicious creepy
sensation around the small of its back. Gosh! The Squire was a shrewd
feller! It took brains to think of an argyment like that. And eye met
eye significantly, and chin whisker wagged at chin whisker with deep
appreciation of the squire’s subtlety.

There was no doubt but that the prosecutor, in spite of his personal
unpopularity, had in the opinion of those in the court room scored a
very neat point. It was all very well for Mr. Tutt by his redirect to
call attention to the absurdity and unlikelihood of a murderer
immediately after the homicide strolling unconcernedly into a grocery
store where he was well known, bearing upon his person all the
evidences of his crime. It might be kind o’ foolish, but then--Skinny
the Tramp was kind o’ foolish. The rainbow theory of motive more than
counterbalanced the obvious recklessness of such a performance. If
Skinny, guided to the scene of his crime by the rainbow, had murdered
the hermit in order to get his gold, it was quite in character that he
should have done afterwards what obviously he had done. You might as
well ask--as Mr. Tutt did ask--why he hadn’t changed his boots? To
which Squire Mason had replied that he hadn’t changed them for the
simple reason that they were all he had,--and if murderers never did
anythin’ but what was wise and prudent you’d never ketch any of ’em.
And at this retort the chin whiskers on the front of the jury wagged
again. No, on the face of it--except for the alibi--things looked very
bad for Skinny the Tramp; and Mr. Tutt knew that his alibi, as it
stood, wasn’t worth a tinker’s damn! Squire Mason had only to hand the
photograph to the jury and call its attention to the fact that the
clock had stopped and all would be over. Yet Mr. Tutt, buoyed up by a
mysterious confidence, which had its basis in the prosecutor’s
uneasiness, bore himself bravely in the face of all his difficulties.

The last witness to the alibi gave his stammering testimony, was
cross-examined, redirected, recrossed and excused. The court room
clock pointed to half after twelve. The crucial moment of the trial
had been reached. Skinny’s alibi stood--swaying to be sure--but still
in the perpendicular. If the case should be closed then and there it
would remain erect and Skinny would doubtless go free, but if the
squire so much as pulled out a single brick, gave it the tiniest push,
by calling the jury’s attention to the fact that the hermit’s clock
was not going at the time of the murder the alibi would fall with a
crash and Skinny would pay with his life. What was the squire going to
do?

“Well, gentlemen,” remarked Judge Tompkins. “What are your desires?
Does the defense rest?”

Mr. Tutt hesitated. His only possible remaining witness was the
defendant himself. He would, of course, gladly rest his case if the
prosecutor would do the same thing. But Squire Mason gave no
indication of what his intentions in that regard might be.

“If your honor please,” he said, “the usual hour of adjournment is
nearly at hand. May I suggest that we take a recess until one-thirty
in order that I may have time to review the evidence? It is my present
intention to rest my case upon the alibi which has been so clearly
established and to call no further witnesses, but I should like an
hour’s time to consider the matter.”

“That seems reasonable,” agreed Judge Tompkins. “Is that satisfactory
to you, Mr. District Attorney?”

The squire half arose from his chair. But before he could make reply
the legal earthquake--of which Mr. Tutt had remained in deadly fear
ever since Mr. Pennypacker had given his testimony--occurred. The
alibi shivered at its top like a tree under the woodsman’s ax, hung
for a moment in trembling equilibrium and crashed to the ground.

“Before we adjourn fer dinner,” remarked the foreman, “I’d like to
take a look at that picter o’ the inside o’ the shanty. I want to see
suthin’.”

Mr. Tutt turned sick. Forcing his features into a distorted smile he
said with an assumption of impulsive eagerness:

“By all means!--Squire Mason, will you kindly hand Exhibit F to Mr.
Sawyer?”

And then the wily squire, having patiently awaited this exact moment
for three whole days, bent over and lifted a package from beneath his
desk--precisely as Mr. Tutt had anticipated--announcing dramatically:

“I suttinly will. An’ as I regard Exhibit F as the most important
piece of evidence in the case I’ve had fifteen copies made of it,--one
for the judge, one for each juryman, one for the defense and one for
myself. Here they be!”

There was a ruffle of excitement as the jury scrambled for their
photographs--destined in the succeeding years to decorate twelve
parlor walls in as many Mohawk farmhouses--along with the stand of wax
flowers purchased by Aunt Hetty at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876,
the picture of Niagara Falls done in real cork, and the sampler worked
by Grandma Harrington when she was a little girl. Each juror grabbed
his photograph and hunched back in his seat to see what he could see.
Then the foreman remarked with the air of a Sherlock Holmes addressing
his dear Watson:

“Accordin’ to the evidence this here picter was took at six o’clock in
the afternoon and the plate was exposed ten minutes. Now if the clock
in the shanty had been goin’ you’d natcherly expec’ the picter to show
the hour hand pointin’ at six and the minute hand blurred. But both
hands is perfectly distinct and pints to four o’clock. Now it ’pears
to me as if this clock must ha’ stopped--no one knows when,--an’, if
it wasn’t goin’, of course Emerson couldn’t say when it was that he
went into the shanty, and nobody knows when the hermit was kilt. Ain’t
thet so, jedge?”

In the silence which followed this entirely logical and demolishing
argument the only sound to be heard was the ticking of the official
timepiece on the court room wall, until Judge Tompkins said in a
constrained tone and with a glance full of meaning at Mr. Tutt.

“The foreman has pointed out a fact of considerable significance. But
of course the matter will be one for discussion in the jury room, if
the case goes to the jury. At all events we will now take the
customary adjournment until half past one o’clock.”


The ax had fallen. The jig was up. The defense was doomed. The knell
had sounded for Skinny the Tramp. The poor old alibi was dead, ready
to be carried out and buried. And so, almost was Mr. Tutt, who sat
head in hands alone in the stifling court room, gloomily pondering
upon the manifold changes and chances of this mortal life. He was up
against it. Without Emerson there was no possibility of eliciting any
new fact,--if any there were. Even with Emerson there was only a
conjectural conceivability of so doing. Further examination might or
might not benefit the defense,--the probabilities being decidedly
against it. And Emerson had utterly disappeared; Mr. Tutt’s hourly
telephone messages to Orient Mills only elicited the invariable reply
that he had not returned to work, that nobody had the remotest idea
where he was and that the subpena was there waiting for him all ready
to be served when he turned up, if ever he should.

Mr. Tutt’s brain was working as it had rarely worked before. It fairly
seethed as he considered every possibility of escape, no matter how
remote. Should he put Hawkins upon the stand? With the alibi destroyed
a conviction seemed inevitable unless the defendant made some sort of
an explanation of the evidence against him. But Skinny’s was so lame
as to be almost worse than no defense at all, and on cross-examination
the squire would certainly make mince meat of him.

Not that what Skinny had told him might not be true, but nobody would
believe it. It was so extremely simple as to be childish--merely that
he had not done it! No one better than Mr. Tutt himself knew the
immense disadvantage under which even an innocent defendant labors
under cross-examination. It is merely a bull baiting. Ignorant,
stupid, uneducated, the ordinary accused in a criminal case is no
match even for a tyro of a prosecutor. Often he does not even
understand the meanings of the questions put to him. And he must
answer categorically--yes or no. With an unscrupulous district
attorney the prisoner on the witness chair can only deny the
accusations, often unfounded, that are hurled against him one after
the other and which the jury accept as unqualifiedly true. Better for
him the ancient law that as an interested party he could not testify
in his own behalf. Yet to-day a defendant must testify or the jury
will assume him guilty as a matter of course. No, if Skinny took the
stand they would eat him alive. He would be a gone coon. And if he
didn’t take the stand he would be a gone coon. He was a gone coon
either way,--damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

As to Emerson, no judge in his senses, least of all a wise old bird
like Tompkins, J., was going to adjourn a murder trial--right in the
middle of it--in order to let one side chase up a witness who had been
fully examined and told he could go away--simply because one of the
lawyers thought he’d like to ask him another question. It wasn’t done.
If it were done, trials would never come to an end,--and half the
murderers would get off.

Beside him Skinny Hawkins, his client, was quietly eating his lunch,
consisting of a couple of sandwiches and a big doughnut, sent over
from the Phoenix House by “Ma” Best. It was a safe bet that at that
time to-morrow he would be awaiting the sentence of death. Did he
appreciate the situation? Was he cognizant of his peril? Certainly he
gave no indication of it. Unexpectedly Skinny raised his faded blue
eyes to those of the old lawyer and asked:

“Mr. Tutt, do you believe anythin’ ever dies?”

Mr. Tutt pulled himself together sharply.

“Of course not!” he replied confidently. “Of course not!”

“Then it’s all right--anyway!” said Skinny the Tramp.


We have sometimes felt constrained to write an essay, to be entitled
“The Menace of the Probable,” the thesis of which will be that it is
the improbable which usually happens, and explain why. The axiom that
“fact is stranger than fiction” is based upon this truism. All of life
is centered around a struggle to make ourselves and everything about
us exceptions to the general rule. We are all striving for the
unusual, the extraordinary. The probable is the very last thing that
we want; its menace is our Nemesis. So we don’t look for it; our minds
jump to the unlikely. This is the more natural since the “element of
uncertainty” in human affairs makes the improbable quite probable, if
you see what we mean. As Aristotle says: “Better a probable
impossibility than an impossible probability.” Thus the
improbable--and hence the probable--thing with regard to the vanished
Emerson was that he had unexpectedly received word that he had been
made the legatee of a million taels by a Chinese nobleman or something
like that. This was the reason that Mr. Tutt had sent his telegram to
New York--so that his detectives could search all the unlikely places
in Northern New York, Canada, and eventually, Alaska, at twelve
dollars fifty per day and expenses. He knew nothing would come of
it--even if he secured a six months’ adjournment. He had never yet got
anything from a detective agency except a bill. The probabilities were
that some improbability had happened--just as it always did and does
that Emerson had joined a traveling circus,--run away with a
minister’s wife, gone into the movies, or been murdered himself. Under
these circumstances the detectives would detect--perhaps. That was
their line--the probable improbability; not the improbable
probability. To foresee or deduce that requires genius. None of which
paradoxical and specious reasoning of Mr. Tutt’s at all helped the
situation, the gist of which was that Skinny was going to be hung.

Mr. Tutt, having reassured the tramp with regard to the future of his
immortal soul, took up his hat and started for the Phoenix House. If
he was going to die he purposed to die game; to die game a man must
live; to live one must eat; hence, the better one ate the better one
died. For this reason he purposed to do execution in the best possible
manner upon one of “Ma” Best’s dollar dinners. That is, he had
intended to do so until turning the corner of the court house he
walked into Mr. Charles Emerson, who was nonchalantly sitting on an
empty lemon crate smoking a cigar.

Mr. Tutt punched himself violently in the ribs. Was it possible?
Emerson, seeing the distinguished attorney regarding him with eyes
starting from their sockets, slowly arose.

“Don’t move!” shouted Mr. Tutt. “As you were!--


 ‘Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damned,
 Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,
 Be thy intents wicked or charitable----’


don’t you dare to stir until I get the sheriff and clap a subpena on
you! We’ve been hunting all over Somerset County for you!”

“Well, I’ve been here ever since yesterday afternoon,” answered
Emerson blandly.

“Sit still!” warned the lawyer. “Don’t budge! If you do I won’t answer
for the consequences!”

Then, seeing Sheriff Higgins about to enter the drug store, Mr. Tutt
hurried down the street, summoned him forth, and conducting him around
the corner, said:

“Sheriff, Mr. Emerson is with us again.”

“Ye don’t say now!” ejaculated Higgins.

“Yes,” asserted Mr. Tutt. “But being a witness for the prosecution it
would not be quite proper for me to talk to him. Do you think it would
be possible for you to casually ascertain from him a little more fully
what he knows about the hour of the murder?”

“Well----” hesitated the sheriff.

“But you’re a sacred camel,” urged Mr. Tutt.

 * * * * * *

The fact that Emerson also was a camel and that all camels are
proverbially thirsty animals may have accounted for Squire Mason’s
failure to learn of the lost witness’ reappearance before court
opened. While the worthy Hezekiah during the progress of the trial had
at times felt momentary twinges of apprehension--not, of
conscience--but lest his motives and conduct of the prosecution should
be impugned, he now felt secure. The only person in the world--as he
thought--whose testimony could possibly subject him to censure had
providentially absented himself. It made no difference whether Skinny
took the stand or stayed off it. His denial wouldn’t affect the
strength of the case in any way,--would amount to nothing in view of
the blood on his hands, the marks of his shoes, the pipe, the twenty
five-dollar gold pieces and the fact that Emerson had trailed him
straight to Pottsville within fifteen minutes.

So the Squire felt pretty fine and the dome on the Capitol at Albany
shone brightly and near at hand. He had old Tutt down and out! Even
the New York papers would probably carry a big story about the
conviction. In the background of his crafty mind lurked, as well, the
realization that in case of a conviction there would be no one to
demand the payment of Skinny’s semiannual interest. So the Hon.
Hezekiah strolled back into the court room, picking his teeth with a
good deal of satisfaction.

It was jammed as usual,--the audience breathlessly awaiting the last
act of the great free show. There sat the jury looking like mutes at a
funeral, there sat Skinny, his eyes wandering vaguely around the room,
there sat Mr. Tutt, calm, alert, stern, tense. Hezekiah didn’t like
the way he looked. Anyhow, he’d beaten him to a standstill,--a
frazzle! Then the clerk having called the roll of the jury, the judge
directed that the trial proceed and Mr. Tutt arose--with just the
least shade of melodrama.

Through the high windows Skinny the Tramp looked past Mr. Tutt’s tall,
lank figure out into the world of freedom, where the great elms gently
swayed in the sunlight, and the white spire of the Baptist meeting
house tapered towards the blue zenith. He, the helpless victim, had
less knowledge of what was going on than any of them. After all, he
perhaps had less to lose than any of them. Then a gust stronger than
the others bowed the rustling top of the elm nearest the court house
and--slowly the cock upon the steeple veered round and pointed in the
opposite direction!


“Mr. William Gookin--please take the witness chair!” said Mr. Tutt.

“Toggery Bill,” Pottsville’s merchant prince, arose from one of the
nearer benches and ascended the rostrum with an air of importance. Mr.
Tutt handed him the five twenty-dollar bills found in the hermit’s
waistcoat pocket.

“Mr. Gookin,” he remarked. “I show you People’s Exhibits numbered
Seventeen to Twenty-one, inclusive, and ask if you can identify them?”

Toggery Bill carefully examined the bills and replied that he could.

“How?”

“I’ve got my mark on each one.”

“Show the jury.”

Mr. Gookin pointed out with pride the words “Pottsville Dry Goods &
Tailoring Emporium, May 16, 1920,” printed in small red letters by
means of a rubber stamp, on each one.

“Now,” continued Mr. Tutt quietly. “Please tell us when you last saw
them?”

“The mornin’ of the murder,” answered “Toggery Bill.” “May
seventeenth, nineteen hundred and twenty!”

“Where did you see them?”

“In my store.--I gave ’em to Squire Mason about eleven o’clock and I
hold his note for a hundred dollars for the loan.”

The effect of this simple announcement was extraordinary, for while it
created complete bewilderment it suggested the weirdest possibilities.
Here was a murdered hermit with a hundred dollars in his pocket which,
within five hours, had been in the possession of the very man who was
now prosecuting the person charged with the homicide. It was all very
confusing to the bucolic mind! Some of them even thought for a moment
that Mr. Tutt had proved that Squire Mason had committed the murder.
Indeed, the Squire was almost as pale as if he had. What was old man
Tutt goin’ to try to get on him?--He did not have to wait long to find
out.

“Mr. Mason--please take the witness chair!”

With a lump in his gullet of the size and dryness of a golf ball
Hezekiah, amid the poorly controlled comments of the spectators which
the sheriff for some reason made no effort to suppress, his diaphragm
quivering with anxiety as to what all this might mean, climbed up into
the public eye and was sworn.

“Mr. Mason--you have heard the testimony of the last witness--Mr.
Gookin--is it correct?”

“Yes,” conceded Hezekiah thickly.

“What use did you make of these bills?”

The Hon. Mason snapped his jaws defiantly together. Then he turned to
Judge Tompkins.

“I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything, judge,” he
complained. “Do I have to answer?”

“It’s perfectly relevant,” returned his honor. “Do you mean to say
that you think how that money got into the possession, and upon the
person, of the deceased isn’t of importance! Of course it
is!--Answer.”

Mason bowed to the inevitable.

“I give it to Skinny--the defendant--in my office at half past
eleven,” said he.

A murmur rose from the benches. This was some evidence! The Squire was
makin’ himself the chief witness for the prosecution. What was coming
next? But nothing came--from Mr. Tutt, who merely bowed.

“Thank you,” said he quietly. “That is all.”

The prosecutor was about to return to his desk before the jury box,
when Judge Tompkins took the hand in the matter which Mr. Tutt had
anticipated that he would.

“Hold on a minute!” directed his honor with a perplexed air. “I don’t
understand. Why did you give the defendant a hundred dollars on the
morning of the murder?”

“’Cause he asked for it?” returned the squire shortly.

“Did you owe it to him?”

“Why--no,” answered the squire. “That is, not exactly. It weren’t a
debt. It was interest due.”

“Due on what?” demanded the judge irritably.

“On his trust fund----” reluctantly admitted Mason. The judge peered
at him sharply over his spectacles.

“Who is the trustee of the fund?”

There was a long pause.

“I am,” yielded Mason finally.

“Do you mean that you are the trustee of a fund of which this
prisoner, whom you are trying to convict of murder, is the
beneficiary?” cried Tompkins, leaning forward.

“I am,” assented Mason faintly.

There was a chorus of mingled hisses and jeers from the benches, but
Judge Tompkins took no notice of it.

“This is a most extraordinary situation!” he declared. “However--we
will not deal with it now. Proceed with the trial.”

Mason crept back to his seat. It was clear that the judge had it in
for him,--but that needn’t affect the outcome of the trial. Then he
got another jar--this time an even heavier one.

“Charles Emerson,” murmured Mr. Tutt sweetly, “please take the
stand--I have an additional question I wish to put to you in
cross-examination.”

There was nothing in Emerson’s recall to excite any special interest
among the spectators, since few, if any, of them knew that he had gone
away. But there was much in Squire Mason’s demeanor as the witness
made his way forward to give pause to those who watched him. Something
had happened to him. He had shriveled--nought else. With his eyes
shifting uneasily the district attorney sat fumbling with his papers,
refusing to meet those of the mill hand. Then he arose and said in a
husky voice which held no conviction:

“I object to the recallin’ of this witness. He’s been examined once.”

“I overrule your objection--Mr. Tutt may interrogate him as fully as
he wishes,” retorted Judge Tompkins sharply. He turned to Emerson.

“Where have you been? I understood you had disappeared.”

Emerson smiled sheepishly.

“I’ve been here right along,” he answered, “’cept just after I give my
testimony. You see, I took a job up to Orient Mills and signed on the
next mornin’, but I got thinkin’ about the case an’ I decided to come
back.”

“Why?” demanded his honor.

“Well, jedge,” explained Emerson, “y’see I figured out that mebbe my
evidence might turn out to be pretty important, for I heard over to
the Phoenix House how Skinny was goin’ to try to prove he was in
Pottsville at four o’clock. Now I knew the murder was done jest about
that time. An’ I testified to it here, but----” and he spoke very
slowly and distinctly--“nobody,--neither Squire Mason nor Mr.
Tutt,--asked me much about it--and I got thinkin’----”

“I object t’ all this!” again interposed Mason. “This ain’t any proper
way for him to testify--tellin’ about what he thought, an’ all.”

“That is quite true,” agreed his honor. “Mr. Tutt, you had better
question the witness in the regular way.”

Mr. Tutt bowed. He too had observed that the weather cock had veered.

“Anyhow I come back on the next train,” finished Mr. Emerson, “an’
I’ve been here right along.”

“Mr. Emerson,” Mr. Tutt began, his voice trembling slightly from the
excitement under which he labored, “you have testified that when you
entered the hermit’s shanty the clock pointed to four o’clock.”

“Yes,” answered the witness, “it did.”

“You have also testified that you returned later on with Mr.
Pennypacker, when he took his photograph. Did you notice the clock at
that time?”

“I did.”

“At what hour was it pointing?”

“Four o’clock.”

“Was it going at that time?”

Emerson shook his head.

“No,” he replied. “It warn’t.”

Mr. Tutt’s heart gave a flutter, but he kept bravely on without
batting a lid.

“But you testified positively that you knew it was four o’clock when
you went there the first time.”

“Yep--yes, I mean,” replied the witness firmly. “I know it was four
o’clock.”

Mr. Tutt was now on terra firma, for he knew that whatever the answer
might be--it was bound to be favorable. He was safely within the
conservative rule that you must never ask a question unless you are
sure that the answer cannot hurt you. But he did not know what the
answer was going to be, had no idea of what fact he might be about to
elicit. So that there was a delicious uncertainty about the next
inquiry, upon which he fully realized that he staked his whole case.

“How do you know it was four o’clock?” he demanded, with a note of
triumph and the air of being now about to disclose something which he
had known perfectly well all along but which he had withheld until
this, the exact psychological moment. “Tell the jury how you know, Mr.
Emerson!”

The jury fully apprised of the fact that upon the answer hung the
validity of Skinny’s alibi focused their eyes on the lumberman’s
honest face. Even Judge Tompkins could not refrain from turning half
way round and pulling his chair towards the witness box so as not to
lose a word. By common consent, by instinct, and in fact, this was the
apex, the climax, the denouement of the trial of Skinny the Tramp.
Would Emerson make good--or wouldn’t he?

“Fer one thing because I kin almost swear I heard the clock tick and
saw the hand move,” answered Emerson positively.

The jury looked at one another inquiringly. That was pretty strong
testimony! To recall that you heard a clock tick!

“Are you quite sure?” cautioned Judge Tompkins. “Remember that this is
a very important bit of evidence.”

“Pretty near!” answered Emerson. “I’m satisfied fer myself that I did,
but this bein’ a court o’ law, mebbe I’d oughter be more certain to
swear to it. Anyhow that is how I remember it. I testified before how
I went into the shanty and saw the hermit lyin’ with his mouth covered
with blood and how he died while I held his head in my hand. If you’d
been there, you’d ha’ remembered it all right, I reckon. But nobody
axed me if I knew the clock was goin’. Wal, it was this way. When I
lifted the hermit’s head an’ looked in his face the shanty was all
still,--’ceptin’ fer three things.”

He paused, almost as if for effect.

“What were they?” softly demanded Mr. Tutt.

Emerson lowered his voice.

“The first was the kind of cluckin’ sound the hermit’s breath made
goin’ in and out through his mouth on account of the blood. His eyes
was half open but they didn’t see none. He was just passin’ out. It
was so quiet I felt real creepy--all alone with him dyin’. But what
skeered me most was an enormous great moth--the biggest I ever
see--that went flap-flap-flap agin’ the winder tryin’ to git out. It
flapped and flapped and I thought it would stun itself agin’ the
glass. An’ ez I knelt thar holdin’ the hermit’s head, listenin, to his
breathing and to that big gray moth flappin’ over at the window, I kin
most swear I heard the clock tick--an’ saw the minute hand slip to
four o’clock--and then all of a suddint the whole shanty went still.
The hermit didn’t breathe no more, the moth flew out the
door,--an’----”

“Well?” whispered Mr. Tutt.

“An’ the clock stopped!”

In the silence that followed there was no one in the court room that
did not mark the ticking of the clock upon the rear wall. Each
listener told himself that if necessary he could swear to it until his
dying day. Then Mr. Tutt said, almost with unconcern:

“And did you tell Squire Mason all this?”

“Sure!” replied Emerson, looking the prosecutor full in the face. “I
told him all about it that very afternoon!”

Judge Tompkins fixed the wretched prosecutor with a beetling eye.

“How do you reconcile the withholding of this very vital evidence from
the jury?” he inquired in icy tones.

Mason, ivory white, attempted to rise, but collapsed weakly into his
chair.

“I didn’t believe it!” he answered faintly. “It ain’t any part o’ my
duty to have a witness tell fairy stories to the jury.”

“But in calling the witness you vouched for his credibility!” retorted
Judge Tompkins with contempt.

“Only in so far as I brought out his testimony myself,” replied the
Squire feebly. “I believed he was tellin’ the truth about findin’ the
hermit still alive--and mebbe about the moth--but I didn’t
believe--an’ I don’t believe now--an’ what’s more I don’t believe
anybody else believes--that that partic’lar clock up an’ stopped the
very moment the hermit died.”

He pressed his lips together resolutely.

Judge Tompkins turned a scornful shoulder to the now groveling
Hezekiah.

“Mr. Emerson,” said he. “You have contributed materially by your
testimony, given this afternoon, to our knowledge of the case. Have
you any other means of knowing whether at the time you think you saw
the hand of the hermit’s clock move to four o’clock it was then
pointing to the correct time?”

“Yes, jedge, I have,” answered the witness without hesitation. “For
just as the silence come in the shanty--when the hermit had died, and
the big moth had flown out, and--the clock had stopped, the whistle
over to Sawyer’s Steam Lumber Mill blew four o’clock.”

“I guess that settles _that_!” remarked the foreman, leaning back and
wagging a confirmatory chin whisker.

“Did you tell that to Squire Mason?” inquired his honor scathingly.

“No,” answered Emerson. “I tole him it was four o’clock and how the
clock stopped, an’ as he didn’t seem partic’larly interested ’bout the
hour, I let it go at that.”


Those of our readers who perchance should happen to find themselves
for a night in Pottsville or in any of the adjacent towns should not
fail to elicit from the oldest accessible inhabitant the great story
of the ripping up of Squire Mason by Lawyer Tutt in the latter’s
closing address to the jury, and how the governor, upon the
recommendation of Judge Tompkins, promptly removed him from office,
thus blasting a promising political career. For Mr. Tutt, by one of
those freaks of fortune which do occasionally occur, found himself in
a position to make good on every one of the charges--both direct and
indirect--which he had made against the prosecutor and to prove him in
fact to be every one of all the varieties of crook, rascal and
rapscallion that he had called him. And he somehow managed in addition
to convince everybody--except possibly shrewd Judge Tompkins--that he
had known all about everything from the beginning of the trial and
that the whole Emerson business had been just a grandstand play
carefully staged to give a proper theatrical effect to the final coup.
Anyhow, according to general account, there wasn’t a thing left of
Squire Mason when Mr. Tutt got through with him. He was flayed,
disemboweled, torn limb from limb, drawn and quartered, and his
various physical members, with their connective tissues, scattered
broadside over Somerset County--to the great joy of the inhabitants
thereof. And, what was of vastly more importance, Skinny the Tramp’s
alibi was definitely, finally and impregnably established; so that
when Judge Tompkins concluded his charge to the jury at a quarter past
three o’clock on Friday afternoon everybody said it was all over but
the shouting and most of them didn’t wait to hear the verdict.

Indeed, so confident was public opinion of an immediate acquittal that
the sheriff didn’t even take Skinny back to the calaboose, but allowed
him to smoke one of Mr. Tutt’s stogies right in the court room, while
Judge Tompkins and the old lawyer strolled across Main Street to sit
on the Phoenix House piazza until the jury should come in.

“Well, Mr. Tutt,” said his honor, as he politely declined one of the
famous Wheeling corona-coronas, “I must congratulate you on a most
adroit and effective piece of court room strategy. The way you held
back and finally brought out the story of the clock was really
masterly!”

Mr. Tutt smiled enigmatically.

“I took several chances in that case!” he admitted with a great deal
more truth than his listener was aware of.

“However,” replied Judge Tompkins, “you didn’t take anywhere near as
many as our friend the district attorney. Unofficially--not for
publication, and in the language of the metropolis from which you
come,--in my opinion, he’s some crook.”

“Unofficially and confidentially,” returned Mr. Tutt, “I entirely
agree with you. Speaking mildly, he’s got by long odds the most
perverted sense of fair play that I have ever come across.”

“That’s all the good it will do him,” said his honor. “If I’m not
mistaken that jury will acquit inside of fifteen minutes.”

“You never can tell,” murmured Mr. Tutt. “It’s fourteen minutes since
they went out already.”

“Anyhow it’s only a question of a very short time--your alibi was
conclusively established.”

“Yes,” assented Mr. Tutt, “but very likely there’s some rube on that
jury that doesn’t know yet what the word means.”

As if in curious confirmation of Mr. Tutt’s cynical opinion of the
cerebral equipment of his fellow human beings the sheriff at this
moment appeared from the direction of the court house.

“Jedge,” said he, “the jury allow ez how they’d like to have some
supper. Shall I bring ’em over or hold ’em awhile?”

“What do you think, Mr. Tutt?” inquired his honor.

“When a jury wants its supper,” answered the old lawyer, “always give
it to ’em--and send ’em in a box of cigars besides.”

Judge Tompkins laughed.

“All right, sheriff,” said he, “give them their supper, by all means.
Strange,” he added. “I thought surely they’d agree almost
immediately!”

“They were doin’ a powerful lot of talkin’ the last time I went into
the jury room,” remarked the sheriff. “You could hear ’em holler way
acrost the road.”

He vanished into the court house and presently returned leading the
jury like an ancient bell weather down the steps and towards the
hotel. The judge and Mr. Tutt eyed them intently for the purpose of
deciphering if possible the thoughts concealed behind their
inscrutability. But no more expressionless set of men ever ascended
the piazza steps of the Phoenix House than the jury to whose keeping
had been entrusted the life of Skinny the Tramp.

“Hanged if I can tell a thing from looking at ’em,” admitted Judge
Tompkins.

“I can,” countered Mr. Tutt. “They’re hungry.”

It appeared in due course that this particular jury was more than
ordinarily hungry, for its members not only consumed the entire
official menu but insisted on eating three plates apiece of “Ma”
Best’s griddle cakes; after which they sat on the piazza for an entire
hour in replete silence while digestion took its course; and it was
eight o’clock and after repeated urgings on the part of the sheriff
before they reluctantly consented to return to the court house.

“It’s only a matter of form,” opined Judge Tompkins to Mr. Tutt.
“They’ll agree now in no time.”

“H’m! You never can tell!” answered Mr. Tutt, as he excused himself
and went upstairs to refill his pockets with stogies.

Indeed, Judge Tompkins guessed wholly wrong. The jury--so far as could
be ascertained by any proper legal means--had no immediate intention
of agreeing at all. Nine o’clock came,--and nine-thirty,--with still
no word from them. At ten or thereabouts a vigorous rapping on the
door of the jury room caused the hearts of those spectators who still
lingered in the court house to thump loudly,--but it was only a call
for ice water. At ten-thirty the sheriff reported absolute
silence--evidently a deadlock. At eleven all was still quiet along the
Potomac. The judge, surprised and impatient at what seemed to indicate
the possibility of a miscarriage of justice, directed Sheriff Higgins
to inquire if there was a likelihood of an agreement, to which the
foreman merely returned the laconic answer that as yet they had not
reached a verdict. Five hours had now elapsed since the twelve good
and true men had received their instructions and retired to
deliberate.

“Mr. Tutt,” said Judge Tompkins, “I will wait here until eleven-thirty
and, if there is no word from the jury by that time, I shall return to
the Phoenix House and go to bed.”

But at eleven-thirty no word had come and the sheriff reported that
there was no sound whatever inside the jury room. All argument had
ceased. He couldn’t hear a durn thing. He reckoned they’d gone to
sleep for the night.

“It’s incredible!” declared his honor. “A perfectly plain case! What
do you suppose is making the trouble?”

“You kin search me, jedge!” said the sheriff. “Now you just go acrost
to bed and if anything happens I’ll hustle right over.”

A couple of dozen hangers-on still remained after the judge had left
the court room, whose electric brilliants were only slightly dimmed by
the incense from as many virulent cigars. Betting was now even on the
result, with the odds three to two on an ultimate disagreement.
Evidently for some unknown reason the alibi had gone bad. Mr. Tutt,
sitting on the topmost step of the court house entrance felt a
surreptitious poke in the back and perceived that the sheriff was
beckoning mysteriously to him. Arising with ostentatious indifference
the lawyer followed the official to the rear of the building, where
after making sure that they were unobserved Higgins unlocked a small
door opening upon a flight of back stairs.

“Got suthin’ I want to show ye!” he muttered with an elaborate facial
contortion designed to register mischievous humor. Mr. Tutt responded
with a similar grimace and the two cautiously tiptoed up the stairs to
the topmost landing where the sheriff unlocked another door, and after
lighting a candle tip produced from his trousers pocket conducted the
lawyer into the blackness of what was evidently the court house attic.

“Duck yer head!” he warned, “if ye don’t want to crack yer skull!”

“Where are you going?” asked Mr. Tutt, although he did not in the
least care.

“Never you mind!” retorted his guide.

Then after he had felt his way sixty feet or so across the timbers the
sheriff stopped and blew out the candle.

“We’re right over the jury room,” he whispered.

The attic was hot, dusty, close, and full of cobwebs, suggestive of
man-eating spiders, but enthused with the spirit of adventure Mr. Tutt
stood motionless over the crack of light which showed them to be in
the right place. Below, all was silence, penetrated by an occasional
hiss and punctuated now and then with a snore. What had occurred? Was
there in fact a deadlock? Would Skinny the Tramp have to face another
trial for his life? After what seemed an incredible period of time a
chair scraped and a voice was heard:

“What time is it now, Bill?”

There was a momentary hiatus during which a watch was evidently
consulted and then the foreman made reply:

“Ten minutes to twelve.”

Again the cloak of silence descended upon the so-called deliberations
of the jury. Then Mr. Tutt was startled by the voice of Sawyer, the
foreman, who evidently sat just beneath them.

“Well, boys,” he exclaimed in a voice full of relief, “it’s five
minutes after midnight--Saturday mornin’--an’ I guess we’re safe to
claim another day’s pay. After all, three dollars is real money--wuth
gettin’!--All up! Seventh inning!”

There was a tremendous scuffling of feet below,--intermingled with
loud yawns.

“Well,” said the foreman again, “we’re all agreed, ain’t we? It’s an
acquittal, ain’t it?”

“Yep!--You betcher!--Sure!” came from eleven husky throats.

The foreman pounded sharply upon the door of the jury room and the
sheriff scrambled hastily towards the attic door.

“An’ the next thing--after we git outer here,” continued the foreman
drily, “is to decide what we’re goin’ to do with Squire Mason!”

 * * * * * *

The crowd surged about Skinny, caught him up on its shoulders and bore
him struggling and feebly protesting out of the court room, down the
steps, and over to the Phoenix House. “Ma” Barrows was waiting for
them, and when they dumped Skinny down on the piazza she threw her
arms about him and with the tears streaming down her cheeks cried:

“You poor, poor boy! Come right in and let me give you some nice hot
supper and after that a soft clean bed!”

But Skinny shook his head.

“The supper’s all right,” he said. “But I guess I’d rather sleep
outdoors!”

In the court room Sheriff Higgins approached Mr. Tutt, who was
gathering up his papers.

“Well,” he said, taking a fat envelope out of his breast pocket and
glancing into it, “Here’s your fee--Two hundred and fifty
dollars!--Wisht I could earn money that easy!”

Mr. Tutt waved the envelope away with a careless gesture.

“Give it to Skinny,” he said. “He needs it!”

Then with a rush the crowd came piling into the court room again.

“Where’s Mason?” they demanded angrily. “Where’s the old son of
a----!”

But the Squire, being wise in his generation, had taken his departure.

 * * * * * *

On a hillside overlooking the fertile valley of the Sacramento, Skinny
the Tramp lay amid a clump of giant redwoods and watched the sun
drawing water through the rain clouds gathered a thousand feet below
him. Resting upon a thick bed of pine needles, he leaned luxuriously
against a rock, while at his feet, propped over a small fire, a tomato
can bubbled cheerily and gave forth a sweet-smelling savor. It was six
months after the trial and two months since One-eyed Pedro,
heir-apparent of the Zingara Gipsies, had confessed in the deathhouse
at Sing Sing, where he was awaiting execution for the murder of his
father, that he had killed Drake, the Hermit of Turkey Hollow.

This was the first real opportunity that Skinny had had a chance to
sit as he loved with the world at his feet--and think----! With his
eyes half closed and the gray smoke from his cigarette coiling and
uncoiling in the shaft of sunlight that shot through the branches
above his head, Skinny recalled the events leading up to his trial. It
had been very much the same sort of an afternoon that the hermit was
killed; there had been the same softness in the air, the same flooding
sunlight shining gold-red on the trees and fields against the
blue-gray of the rainclouds. He had been lying just that same way on
the hillside above Turkey Hollow,--dreaming as usual of pots of gold.
Then the storm had burst and for half an hour it had poured, as it was
raining now at the other end of the valley, and the rainbow had come
out against the leaden sky with one end of it on the hermit’s hut.

He recalled vividly how he had rushed down through the drenched woods,
passing the lumberman Emerson, whose greeting in his hurry he had
neglected to return, and peeked in through the hermit’s window to find
him counting his gold. What a thrill the sight had given him! His
faith had at last been justified! Just as he’d always known it
sometime would be; rainbow--pot of gold! The fact that the gold
belonged to someone else didn’t really affect the soundness of the
theory one way or the other, and when the hermit had good-naturedly
agreed to exchange twenty of the smaller pieces for a hundred dollars
in bills he had been almost as well pleased as if he had found the
gold hidden in the earth. Then he had strode on through the woods to
the village.

That was all there had been to it. It had taken him twenty minutes to
walk the mile--he knew it, because the hermit’s clock had pointed to
twenty minutes to four when he left the shanty. Suddenly the blood in
the tramp’s jugular leaped violently. Yes, the clock had certainly
pointed to twenty minutes to four--and if so--it must have--_must_
have stopped--run down or something--at the very moment the old man
died!--And he, Skinny, was the only person alive who knew it,--for he
was the only person who knew positively that it had been going just
before the murder. Funny!--a prickly feeling spread over his
back--like a needle bath, only he had never had one. It _was_ funny!
And then there was that enormous gray moth that Emerson said had been
trying to get out the window. Hadn’t he warned the hermit that some
day those bugs would wriggle off their pins and go for him! Sure! And
the clock had stopped!--The tune of the old song floated through his
mind and unconsciously he hummed the words over to himself:


 “O my grandfather’s clock was too high for the shelf,
 So it stood ninety years on the floor.
 It was taller by half than the old man himself,
 Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
 It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
 And was always his treasure and pride,
 But it--stopped--short--never to go again--
 When--the old--man--died.”


It had,--too! He was the only one who knew it--or the whole story
about the moth! How the hermit had jokingly said that some day maybe
he’d go flappin’ off like a big gray moth.--Now he was in that other
world--that world that was right along beside us!

Skinny looked around apprehensively but there was no moth in sight.
Had it grown chilly? He shivered and noticed that his cigarette had
gone out. He lighted it again on his knees at the fire and as he did
so the sweet savor of the soup rose to his nostrils. It was nearly
done! He forgot all about the murder in the anticipation of soup.

Back through the whole being of Skinny the Tramp surged a warm
delirious joy--merely at being alive. Kneeling there he looked like
the votary of some forest god, as he rubbed his lean hands over the
blaze and stretched his arms outward and upward towards the sky. He
yawned deliciously. Then he observed with interest that a rainbow had
appeared on the opposite side of the valley--a wonderful, gleaming
arch, whose blending colors seemed to singe the clouds. One end of it
descended directly upon a field hard by a yellow farmhouse. Pots of
gold again!

Skinny watched, as it momentarily grew brighter, beckoning him to
wealth and possible adventure; then forgetful of the soup he scrambled
to his feet.

The next instant he had plunged down the hillside towards the
valley--after the rainbow!

 [The End]




 Transcriber’s Notes

Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. grandstand/grand-stand,
weathercock/weather-cock/weather cock, etc.) have been preserved.

Alterations to the text:

Add ToC.

Abandon the use of drop-caps.

Fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings.

[Chapter I]

Change “some one o’ these days them _bugs ’ll_ wiggle” to _bugs’ll_.

[Chapter II]

“almost at his heels,--_never-the less_, and this is the crux” to
_nevertheless_.

[Chapter III]

(“Keerful how you light a match” cautioned the prosecutor.) add a
comma after _match_.

“I can’t stop it, ’cause I _aint’_ got no idee where it is” to
_ain’t_.

“and endeavored to paw _Cassopeia_ from the zenith” to _Cassiopeia_.

“there persisted in Mr. _Tutts_ perfervid, but fast fading,
consciousness” to _Tutt’s_.

“delivered upon the one o’clock train for _Pottsvile_” to
_Pottsville_.

“Come at once, _bringing_ Bonnie Doon and four detectives” to _bring_.

[Chapter IV]

“who was _nochalantly_ sitting on an empty lemon crate smoking” to
_nonchalantly_.

(“Well?” whispered Mr. Tutt) add a period to the sentence.

 [End of text]






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