The Hermit of Turkey Hollow (continued 2)

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

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.

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.

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:

“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

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!—

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?”