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he Hermit
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Arthur Train
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HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
LIBRARY
GIFT OF
Paul S. Clarkson
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The Hermit of Turkey Hollow


BY ARTHUR TRAIN
THE HERMIT OF TURKEY HOLLOW
BY ADVICE OF COUNSEL
AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING
TUTT AND MR. TUTT
THE EARTHQUAKE
THE WORLD AND THOMAS KELLY
THE GOLDFISH
THE PRISONER AT THE BAR
COURTS, CRIMINALS AND THE CAMORRA
TRUE STORIES OF CRIME
MCALLISTER AND HIS DOUBLE
THE CONFESSIONS OF ARTEMAS QUIBBLE
C. Q., OR IN THE WIRELESS HOUSE
THE BUTLER'S STORY
THE MAN WHO ROCKED THE EARTH
MORTMAIN


The
Hermit of Turkey Hollow
CA
The Story of an Alibi
O
Being an Exploit of
Ephraim Tutt
Attorney & Counselor at Law
By heney
Arthur Train
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1921
ROST
میم
TRA


1
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
Copyright, 1921, by The Curtis Publishing Co.
PRINTED AT
THE SCRIBNER PRESS
NEW YORK, U. S. A.


Jalax
t
12. ? -
To
Dean Kirkham Worcester.


"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."


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow


Alibi.
"Alibi (al'-i-bi) n. I. In law, a plea of having been else-
where at the time an offense is alleged to have been com-
mitted. Hence.-a. The fact or state of having been else-
where 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 in-
consistent 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 con-
clusive 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 im-
possible 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
LL the same," affirmed "Skinny the Tramp,"
"some one o' these days them bugs 'll wig-
gle themselves off'n their pins-an' do for ye!"
AL
The "Hermit of Turkey Hollow" laughed de-
risively 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 un-
easiness. "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. "Nuth-
in' 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."


2
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
The Hermit threw a nervous glance in the di-
rection of the moth, and then, evidently reas-
sured, 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 Her-
mit 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 hetero-
geneous collection of defunct beetles, moths and
butterflies.
"The butterfly don't die-no more'n the co-
coon!" 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 Her-
mit 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 photo-
graphed the human soul!"
"What do them as claim ye can see it say it's


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
3
like?" inquired the Hermit in a tone of incre-
dulity, 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 to-
wards 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.


4
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 some-
time 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
5
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'—


6
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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!"
II
As may be inferred from the foregoing con-
versation 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 im-
putations of vagabondage-the Hermit may of
the two have been entitled to greater social recog-
nition, 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
7
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 up-
land 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 under-
brush, 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 her-


8
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
mit, with most of the modern improvements.
For he was neither a hundred years old with
a bald pate and long white
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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
9
¦
1
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 her-
mit 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 wash-
ing and generally a shade woozy in the upper
story; and nobody could remember Turkey Hol-
low when he had not been there.


IO
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 corre-
spondence, regularly inspected by Constable Hig-
gins 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 Hol-
low." 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 tar-
nished 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
II
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 ex-
posed 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 Haw-
kins, had passed those earlier days-before man-
ual labor had been abhorrent to him-in its vicin-
ity, 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 them-
selves 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


12
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 some-
how 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 de-
clined 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
13
physical and temperamental detriment. Yet,
albeit that he was a high officer of the Hibernat-
ing Hoboes of Hesperides and had once been an
Abyssinian Brother of that elevation known as
the "Order of the Sacred Camel of King Mene-
lik," 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, de-
serted racetrack,-a sinister crew, surreptitious
panderers to credulity and lust, the men surly and


14 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
brutal, the women insolent and dirty, but attract-
ing 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 in-
variably discovered that many of their most cher-
ished personal possessions were unaccountably
missing. But no one cared to pursue and prose-
cute 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 rea-
son 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 Hon-
orable-or "Squire"-Hezekiah Mason was ex-
ecutor. And as Squire Mason is one of the cen-
tral 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."


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
15
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 re-
mained a mystery, since he was the most un-
popular 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,


16 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 con-
taminated. 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 17
came the turn of the wheel and Hezekiah found
himself in a position where by the adroit applica-
tion 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 in-
cident 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 Law-
yer 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 attor-
ney 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 designa-
tion, for Tompkins' unexpired term, district attor-
ney of Somerset County, and having, after forty
years of plodding obscurity, suddenly found him-
self elevated to office he instantly became con-
sumed by the fire of ambition. While Cicero says


18
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 un-
scrupulous, 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 Hermit of Turkey Hollow
19
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 rail-
road station, a memorial library of funereal gran-
ite, 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 un-
paved 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"


20 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 Heze.
kiah 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 re-
lied to cover James Hawkins' semiannual inter-
est 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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
21
"Tol'rable!" he replied curtly.
you've come after your money.'
59
"Yes," assented Skinny. "Still," he added po-
litely, "if it ain't convenient" His blue eyes.
roved vaguely around the barren room seeing
nothing.
"I s'pose
"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 Haw-
kins 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


22 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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—____39
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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
23
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


24 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 re-
move 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!


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
25
Money! That would do it. But a hundred dol-
lars 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 open-
ing of his shack smoking cigarettes, it grew very
dark and for half an hour poured down in tor-
rents. 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 set-
ting of pearls and diamonds, and the hot mist
rose shimmering from the steaming ground.
Gold-gold everywhere! Gold-the mystic ele-
ment sought of the alchemists and of the philoso-
phies 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 con-
centrated prismatic glory-emblem of the eternal
hope that sprang in the tramp's breast. One end
#


26
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
•
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 hur-
ried this time he might find it! Without a mo-
ment's hesitation Skinny plunged down the hill-
side through the reeking undergrowth, drenched
to the skin, slipping, falling now on beds of soak-
ing 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 smok-
ing a pipe, his ax across his knees-waiting evi-
dently 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
27
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, leav-
ing 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 satisfac-
tion 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 re-
bounded from where it had been crushed to earth


28 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 under-
brush 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
29
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 out-
stretched, 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
&


30
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
mouth made a queer guttering sound-grotesque-
ly resembling to his agitated mind the faint cluck-
ing 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.
1
The mill hand dashed from the shanty, mark-
ing 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
31
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 Col-
son'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 indif-
ference. He had also remarked to someone that
he had cut his finger in the woods, and his hand-
kerchief 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


32 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 stagger-
ing 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 au-
thority. "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.-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
33
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 in-
side 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 some-
one.
"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


34 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
35
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.
G
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


36
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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.
99


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
37
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 "cart-
wheels." 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 sug-
gested 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


38
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 suc-
cessful 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!"


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
39
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-mor-
rer. 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


40 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 with-
out 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 her-
mit's shanty, so why admit that he had been
there? That was only common caution. Any-
body 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 ex-
treme youth-of Pottsville sat in rows around
Sam Bellows, dividing their attention between
comments upon his beauty of person and audible


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
4I
conjectures as to the probable fate of the murd-
erer 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 sensa-
tional 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 wit-
ness, considering the fact that he was trustee of
the tramp's money and bore to him the confiden-
tial 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 "any-
thing ever really died?" The squire's hopes
wilted at the thought and his heart fell. Why, it
was the biggest opportunity for legitimate no-


42 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
toriety since the Rosenthal murder! It was ridic-
ulous 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 photog-
rapher from Somerset Corners, for the sheriff
was up on all the latest modern methods of de-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
43
tecting 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 in-
habitants 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 con-
sequentially in a cloud of dust, leaving the staring
crowd gazing enviously after them. They had


44
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 comfort-
able—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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
45
"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 in-
consequently.
They resumed their pilgrimage at a somewhat
lessened pace; but at last they could see the open-
ing-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! Sup-
pose 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 gun-
men. "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 in-
timation of pusillanimity upon his part to get
abroad.
"Guess you're right!" he remarked carelessly.
"Gimme the gun.'
""


46 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"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 her-
mit'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 with-
drew 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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
47
"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
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,


48
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 dis-
tinction to the township which otherwise it would
not have had. It was a great moment for Potts-
ville. 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," circum-
stance 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 de-
bate 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 Hermit of Turkey Hollow 49
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 there-
from and now reposed in the safe of the district
attorney as evidence against him.
Thus came opportunity to the door of Heze-
kiah Mason for the second time; for in his widely
heralded prosecution of Skinny the tramp, he per-
ceived "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 con-
victed a policeman of participating in the murder
of a gambler? Why should not he do the same
for convicting a distinguished tramp of the mur-
der of a famous hermit? Indeed, who shall quar-
rel with his logic?
"Tutt," said Mr. Ephraim Tutt, of the well-
known, if not celebrated, law firm of Tutt & Tutt,


50
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
on entering his office the morning after the meet-
ing 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 ad-
vise 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 pru-
dently sent their invitation at our expense.-You


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
51
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, strik-
ing 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 invi-
tation is a command? What, may I ask, are her-
mits for-but to be murdered?"
"You're incorrigible!" sighed Tutt. "I sup-
pose the whole office will be depleted."
"No-I'll try the case alone!" replied his


52 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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, de-
tective 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 53
Meeting of the Sacred Camels of which—as well
as of many similar organizations-he was a mem-
ber, 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 ca-
pacity for peanuts, popcorn, ice-cream cones and
bananas he demonstrated by actual test at Syra-
cuse 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 mak-
ing his official return. "It's the variety of
metropolis where they regard an imported cigar
as an immorality and where the height of dissipa-
tion 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-


54 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
one sacred camelsof which, you may recall, I
am one."
99
"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 persona 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
55
that he was a trifle less harmless than a cotton-
tail. 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 her-
mit 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-breath-
less, excited, blood on his hands-pursuing wit-
ness arrives-also breathless-at four-fifteen and
gives the alarm. Defendant is arrested but when
accused refuses to make any statement; and, if
•


56
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 de-
fendant 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 de-
fiant 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."”


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
57
"What kind?" asked Mr. Tutt more cheer-
fully.
"Fifty-seven varieties!" affirmed the ambu-
lance-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 com-
pany 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 prin-
ciples. They'll want to vindicate their reputation


58
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
for law and order and-if they're in doubt-in-
stead of acquitting they'll return a verdict of mur-
der in the second and rely on executive clemency
to remedy any possible injustice! I know 'em!"
"Mr. Tutt," replied Bonnie with intense seri-
ousness. "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 sur-
mised 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,


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
59
"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
W
HEN Lawyer Ephraim Tutt arrived in
Pottsville to conduct the defense of
Skinny the Tramp for the murder of the Her-
mit of Turkey Hollow, having been retained
to that end by the local order of the Sacred


60 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 as-
sured 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 repu-
tation?" asked Mr. Tutt.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 61
"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 coun-
try roads beneath the bouncing axles of antique
buggies and carry-alls bearing the sleepless inhabi-
tants 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 ve-
hicle of locomotion,-parked axle to axle.
When at eight o'clock Sheriff Higgins unlocked
the door of the court house the stampede which


62 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 no-
body 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 ac-
cordingly sat still,-except for that slow, uniform,
rhythmical facial movement which now char-
acterizes the entire American nation while viewing
any spectacle. Sheriff Higgins thereupon sat
down heavily himself, by so doing seeming coinci-
dently 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 Mo-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
63
hawk 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 resem-
blance 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 hand-
kerchief, took an ostentatious sip from the dis-
colored 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 pur-
pose, 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


64
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 ex-
cluding the Apochrypha,-and referring specifi-
cally 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 aboli-
tion of benefit of clergy in 1825. As a sympo-
sium of miscellaneous penological information it
was something very fine indeed,—although it had
nothing to do with Skinny the Tramp or the Her-
mit of Turkey Hollow,-and the jury, hardened
by generations of country sermons-not only ac-
cepted 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 inno-
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow "
65
cent, 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 neighbor-
hood at the time, James Hawkins, alias Skinny
the Tramp, the prisoner at the bar,-and Em-
erson, 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


66 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
the crime by Mr. Pennypacker, who ran the gal-
lery 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 discov-
ered 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 audi-
ence 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 defend-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
67
ant 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 melan-
choly 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 cir-
cumstances to convict; and-called Charlie Emer-
son to the witness chair.
If, at this point, the reader should begin to
speculate as to what, if any, is the underlying pur
pose 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 in-
stantly to change his tactics to meet new situa-


68
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
tions 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 happen-
ing is never known, being never learned in court
because the witnesses, well-meaning though they
be, are human,—-fallible as to observation, mem-
ory 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 ex-
cusably demand judgment for his client or the
acquittal of the prisoner. This requires, to be
sure, self-control, ingenuity and audacity; the re-
straint of a Foch awaiting the precise moment to


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
69
counter-attack; the self-trust which the philoso-
pher Emerson says is the essence of heroism.
But Mr. Tutt knew well that the expected never
occurs, except when the expected is the unex-
pected. 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 oppor-
tunist of opportunists, on the alert to snatch vic-
tory 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 ver-
dict 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 ex-


70 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
}
ercise, 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 de-
pends." The lawyer who says that you must
never let a witness leave the stand without ex-
hausting 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 instinc-
tive appreciation of his psychology. Generally


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
71
speaking, it is a pretty safe plan to ask no ques-
tions 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 aston-
ishingly accurate memory for detail, showed him-
self 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 prosecu-
tor 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 testi-
mony 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,


72
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
that for tactical reasons it was imperative that
certain features of his testimony should be sup-
pressed.
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 qualifica-
tion 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
73
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 know-
ing 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 un-
fortunate, 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 hear-
ing 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,-never-
the less, 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 dy-
ing, that it was four o'clock exactly—which as we


74 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
know, and Squire Mason also perfectly well knew,
was the precise moment at which the tramp en-
tered 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 ques-
tion 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 Val-
ley-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 ig-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
75
norant 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 im-
possible that Skinny could have reached Pottsville
fifteen minutes ahead of Emerson-if he were
guilty.
This plausible-but distinctly Tuttian—argu-
ment depended, however, entirely upon the as-
sumption 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-with-
out pause-all the way to Pottsville,-assump-


76
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
tions 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 prob-
ability 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 suc-
ceeded in doing that. Yet, although so far as
Mr. Tutt was aware, this ephemeral syllogism
was all that stood between his client and the elec-
tric chair, nevertheless, and had he only known
it, according to Emerson's full story related pri-
vately to Mason,-Skinny had an iron-clad, cop-
per-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 value-
less. So the shifty Squire carefully omitted to ask
the lumberman any question as to the hour except


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
77
pea
when it was that he had started in to cut his
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 omin-
ously.
"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


78 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
79
sheriff and to Mr. Pennypacker, the photogra-
pher."
"When you went back there with Sheriff Hig-
gins 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 inevi-
table bases of all testimony. Why had he done
so? It was conceivable that the witness was en-
tirely at sea about the time and hence that his evi-
dence 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 attor-
ney should not have gone into the matter at all.
But there was also-Mr. Tutt recognized-an-
other possibility, so remote as to be almost the-


80 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
oretical,-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 great-
est 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 impossi-
ble 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 sup-
posedly unexpected evidence elicited on cross-ex-
amination by a party to whom it is harmful is in-
variably more damaging than if brought out by
-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
81
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 testi-
mony 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 hap-
pened 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."


82 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"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 At-
torney?"
"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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
83
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 re-
quired 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 out-
line. Next to the cot-bed the most conspicuous


84 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 dia-
gram?" 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, sub-
ject, 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 "To gery 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
85
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 experi-
ence of Sheriff Higgins. Being a quiet, home-lov-
ing 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 fig-
ure among the dramatis persona, 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?
1
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 public-


86 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
ly 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 van-
ity, 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 some-
what delicate and paradoxical situation. He had
collected the evidence against Skinny, and was one
of the chief witnesses against him; he acknowl-
edged 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 gratifi-
cation 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
87
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, un-
scrupulous, negligent, timid or even slightly impo-
lite 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 embar-
rassment, one that he was regarded as the hand-
somest 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


88
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 Anat-
omy 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 oppo-
site 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, some-
one 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
89
received Skinny's surrender, yet the sheriff unhesi-
tatingly swore that he had reduced him into pos-
session; the proprietor of the Mohawk Palace
Theatre had searched the tramp and found the
twenty five-dollar gold pieces, yet Higgins man-
aged 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 fur-
niture 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 re-
garded as his deliberate act of treachery in giving
Skinny a good character-all of which we will set
༞་༄, ” ༽ ༽,!༄}༑?、,!,;;༞ རྣ -
ASANAMA AL
F
"


90
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 posi-
tively declined to say a word in defense or extenu-
ation; 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
}


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
91
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 damned-
est 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 friend-
ly 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 oblique-
ly what might be called the "time element" in the
"What hour was it when you and your
case.
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 ?"
T
יייווייי
ANASAY


92
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 ap-
parent 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 pleas-
ant 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?"


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
93
Sheriff Higgins removed with deliberation from
his vest pocket a cheap memorandum book-evi-
dently 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 spec-
tacles, cleared his throat and read in an aggres-
sive, 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.
19
"-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 ?"
1
!,、 r
3211Y
IL


94
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 assas-
sin had been in too much of a hurry to search his
victim, which was not a fact favorable to the de-
fense. 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 disturb-
ance with a low wire fence. The earth had been
soft and squashy and each one had been as dis-
tinct 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."


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
95
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.


96 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
97
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 ad-
versary.
The judge, Mr. Tutt and the jury were all en-
joying 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.
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 At-
torney."
It was true that Mr. Tutt had not scored heav-
ily since he had failed in his most important at-
tempt that is, to corroborate through the sher-
iff's testimony the general accuracy of the hermit's
timepiece, but he had at least secured an official
"Who


98 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 mo-
ment, he had gained something else, the impor-
tance of which did not appear until later. Still,
nothing made any real difference, one way or an-
other, 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 mo-
ment 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, chat-
ted 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
I
1
T
——
----


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
99
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 evi-
dence 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 Skin-
ny's footprints! Yet, however interesting that
fact might seem to the jury, Mr. Tutt rested se-
cure 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 conversa-
tion. What time had he taken the photographs?
About six o'clock. Rather dark? Not particu-
larly, 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."


100 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
Nothing
"Ah!" exclaimed Mr. Tutt eagerly.
No photograph could harm him.
could hurt him now! Why had not Mason put
them in evidence?
"Have you the prints with you?"
Mr. Pennypacker affably leaned over and pro-
duced 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!"


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
IOI
he said with a forced, smile. "Thank you very
much! They are most excellent and artistic photo-
graphs! 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?


102 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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!"
S
-John Gilpin.
OMEWHERE 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 dream-
ing. Then for the mere idle satisfaction of dis-
abusing 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
"
1
1


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
103
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 con-
clusive 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


104 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
o'clock, would have then handed them to the jury
and shown that in effect the clock by which Emer-
son 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
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!"
once.
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 gath-
ered 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.
CLAREDONDA ANTZEZKEREREAK OF REFERRINGESSUS RENFIELERNIZ-ZAHRNUTRIZINAN MINEURODANCE CREAM BULLETERSBEEN


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 105
Many were the envious glances cast upon their
disappearing backs as the less fortunate agricul-
turalists 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 hey 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 dis-
persed, 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


106 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 re-
mained undisclosed, for it was possible-just con-
ceivable-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 corrobo-
rative 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 indefi-
nitely, 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 107
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 pres-
ence 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.


108 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"Do you know where the witness Charles Emer-
son 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 sink-
ing. "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 despe-
rately.
"'Bout seventy miles."


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
109
"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 ^am-adding more hope-
fully, "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 ga-
rage 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."


IIO The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"Would you mind stopping over there and ask-
ing 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 busi-
ness, 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
III
lawyer. "Suppose I pay you fifty dollars for your
time ?"
A hundred tiny beads upon the sheriff's bulg-
ing forehead testified to his struggle with tempta-
tion.
"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 min-
utes 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 re-
quested, 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 search-
ing 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


I12 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
house this evenin' and go over the case with me."
Upon Sheriff Higgins' cadaverous visage de-
scended 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 im-
portance 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!"
4
"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 ear-
shot. It was conceivable that in a state of ebulli-
tion the doughty Squire might betray some small
but none the less useful trifle of information.
1


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
113
"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'?"
99
"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


I 14
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 haz-
ards. Also, it would be much better if Mr. Emer-
son, 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?" demand-
ed 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 ?"


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
115
"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, pos-
sibly 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 osten-
sibly for the purpose of holding official converse
with said witness while at the same time seizing
the opportunity en passant of purchasing an out-
fit of spring clothes, visiting the county fair and
going to the circus. This issue, having been un-
der discussion for several minutes, was still unde-
cided when Mr. Tutt unexpectedly made his ap-
pearance from the direction of the hotel with a
paper in his hand, which he exhibited to the sheriff.
"Excuse me, Squire, for interrupting your con-
versation," he apologized, "but here is a subpena
for the witness Emerson which has just been
issued by the court and endorsed by Judge Tomp-
kins, requiring his attendance to-morrow morn-


116
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
ing." He waited a moment. "There are no trains
this evening and if you expect to serve this pro-
cess 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 impa-
tience. 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 ot-
termobile 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
117
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 inter-
ested 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 prop-
osition, and as Mr. Tutt had spoken in the friend-
liest possible manner Squire Mason became some-
what mollified. He realized that his adversary
could hire any one of several motors at Somerset
Corners and, since he possessed Emerson's ad-
dress, 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 law-


118
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
yer's invitation would mean an opportunity to
keep track of him and stop any tampering with
the witness at the expense of Mr. Tutt him-
self, 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 situ-
ation 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
6


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
119
to keep the change therefrom. Mr. Tutt pro-
duced 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 be-
gan 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 sher-
iff. "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


120 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 bottom-
less pit.
On and on they ground at first speed, rous-
ing 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 them-
selves violently rubbing their noses to counteract
the effect of the vibration. Then after an un-
usually 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
121
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 black-
ness 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!"


122 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"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," en-
couraged the Squire.
A penetrating odor of gasoline made itself no-
ticeable. In the silence could be heard the un-
mistakable 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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 123
"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 aint' 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 in-
terior 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 with-
out them. He had nothing to worry about on
that score, and he had plenty of stogies. The


124 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 inevi-
table and was poking about aimlessly by the road-
side.
"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 automo-
bile?" 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 125
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 be-
ing wholly oblivious, Mr. Tutt climbed out of the
car and strode silently down the road. The move-
ment 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 station-
ary, 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


126 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
presence of Squire Mason. If this light evidenced
the presence of any vehicle of locomotion he pur-
posed 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 dis-
tinguish 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
127
buggy with his legs thrust along the shafts on
either side of the colt. "Because there's an auto-
mobile right in the middle of it.”
The colt, meanwhile, was frantically side-step-
ping upon its hind legs.
"Guess I'll have to turn round-if I kin!" an-
swered 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 re-
gret. "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.


128 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"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 pre-
sented 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 any-
wheres you can, quick!"
To this day Mr. Tutt is unable to give a coher-
ent explanation either of how he did as directed or
how he stayed put when he got there. He mere-
ly 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
129
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 impos-
sible?
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 me-
tropolis 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,


130 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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" be-
yond 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 pre-
sented 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 hesita-
tion 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 architec-
ture than the colt stood up straight upon its hind
legs and endeavored to paw Cassopeia from the
zenith. In a twinkling Mr. Tutt found himself
with his body horizontal and his legs pointing


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 131
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 ad-
jacent 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


132
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
decided to abandon its tests of the Laws of Re-
lativity settled down into a long, leggy trot that
nearly tore Mr. Tutt's old bones from their sock-
ets, 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 ani-
mate and inanimate becoming inextricably con-
fused. Then, with a jerk, it would leap forward
again and they would all fall backwards in immi-
nent 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
133
unseen cavities, numbed and cramped by their
frenzied clinging to the rigid iron.
Several times they flashed by lighted farm-
houses 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. Tutts perfervid, but fast fading, conscious-
ness 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


134
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 despera-
tion Mr. Tutt grasped the animal's tail with both
hands firmly near the root, thus reducing the ra-
dius 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 of
fice 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
135
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 ac-
cepted 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 thet-
away flooded her carburetor and she kep' on leak-
in' 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 travel-
ing all night. The owner of the colt having pock-
eted his money wheeled the buggy and drove off.
"Everybody's asleep in this hick town,
nounced the sheriff. "Guess we'd better run over
to the mill."
""


136
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
So they climbed back into the car and drove on
to Orient Mills. Here all was dark but, by pound-
ing 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. Emer-
son'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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 137
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


138 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 sur-
reptitiously telephoned up to the mills and ar-
ranged 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!"


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 139
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 Potts-
vile. 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 carry-
ing two cramped figures representing both sides
of the bar in the great case of People vs. Haw-
kins, slithered into Pottsville. The only light vis-
ible gleamed from the kitchen window of the
Phoenix House where "Ma" Best, like the vir
tuous woman of Holy Writ, was preparing break-
fast for twelve slumbering jurors and the other
transient participants in the proceeding. Higgins


140
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 sim-
ilarly 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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 141
"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 Bap-
tists, 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


142 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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."
6
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 Emer-
son," 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow, 143
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 cu-
riously, 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 be-
tween 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 an-
tennæ had shot up from behind the hills surround-
ing Turkey Hollow and were gilding the weather
cock on the Baptist steeple.
"'Cause," he replied with conviction, "I be-
lieve 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


144 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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!" ex-
claimed 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 pre-
cision at a dandelion.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 145
"Durn if I know!" he answered helplessly.
"And I'm a camel, at that!" he added with seem-
ing 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 concen-
trated 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:


146 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"Samuel Tutt, Esq.,
"c/o Tutt & Tutt,
"Attorneys-at-Law,
"61 Broadway, New York.
"Case going badly. Need assistance. Come at
once, bringing 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.
JUS
Butler. Hudibras Pt. II. Canto I, 1.51
UST as the scientist reconstructs the dinosaur
from a fragment of bone, so Ephraim
Tutt, ex pede Herculem, as it were,—by vir-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 147
tue 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 exact-
ly 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, re-
sourceful 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. In-


148 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
deed, 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 photo-
graphs of the interior of the shanty, while in evi-
dence, 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 Gro-
cery 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. Adopt-
ing 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 Hermit of Turkey Hollow 149
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 cor-
rectly 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 pain-
ful 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 re-


150 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
motest 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 Tomp-
kins.
"Your honor," announced Squire Mason with
the air of a Stephen A. Douglas, "I have studied
carefully the facts evidenced by The People's wit-
nesses 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 151
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 prose-
cutor'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 circum-
stantial evidence of such an inconclusive character
as has been introduced here!"
Judge Tompkins shook his head.
"I shall deny your motion, Mr. Tutt. There


152 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
is, to my mind, abundant evidence, which if un-
contradicted 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 in-
struct 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 ex-
pectantly. 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
153
never out—at any rate until the verdict was ren-
dered and the highest court in the state had sus-
tained 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. Further-
more, 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


154
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 in-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
155
quiringly towards Squire Mason, who sniffed con-
temptuously and glowered at Mr. Tutt with
hardly concealed malevolence. An alibi, pointed
out the lawyer, was the best possible defense, be-
cause it was the only defense that proved con-
clusively 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, irrefuta-
bly, legally, morally and in every other way,
prove, demonstrate, and substantiate that, even
if Hawkins had been near the shanty that after-
noon, he must have left there long enough before
the murder to walk from Turkey Hollow to Potts-
ville and arrive there at four o clock. All this
Mr. Tutt got off exultantly, triumphantly, gran-
diloquently, in his best "whoop-la" manner, keep-
ing one eye meanwhile upon his antagonist to see
how he would take it.
"Why?" he demanded in tones like those of
•
༣、f、


156 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
Amfortas in the Chapel Scene of Parsifal, "why
had Squire Mason concealed from the Grand
Jury-and, he might add, from his listeners them-
selves 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 with-
held vital information-which in truth would con-
clusively 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, pol-
troon, 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 mean-
while, 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 Hermit of Turkey Hollow
157
the alibi was a good one,-if only it could be
proved to be so! Look at him! Pale, shrink-
ing, guilt pictured in every feature!
"Bang!" went Judge Tompkins' gavel.
"Mr. Tutt!" interrupted his honor with sever-
ity. "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
""


158 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 in-
stinct of the sailor who in the midst of the tempest
knows that the storm is nearly over,—a lighten-
ing 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 syno-
nym for the word rascal in the Century Diction-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
159
ary, Roget's Thesaurus, and all the other hand-
books 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, de-
cided 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? Ob-
viously 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


160
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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' testi-
mony to the effect that four o'clock was the hour
of the murder, then, oh then! he would a tale un-
fold 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 161
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 mur-
der Skinny had entered the door of Colson's gro-
cery 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
1


162 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 recog-
nize 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 de-
veloped 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 any-
thin' 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 talk-
in' about that! They hadn't grasped the purport
-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 163
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


164
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
and unlikelihood of a murderer immediately
after the homicide strolling unconcernedly into
a grocery store where he was well known, bear-
ing 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
165
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 diffi-
culties.
The last witness to the alibi gave his stammer-
ing testimony, was cross-examined, redirected, re-
crossed 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 per-
pendicular. 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?"


166 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
Mr. Tutt hesitated. His only possible remain-
ing witness was the defendant himself. He
would, of course, gladly rest his case if the prose-
cutor 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 evi-
dence? It is my present intention to rest my
case upon the alibi which has been so clearly es-
tablished and to call no further witnesses, but I
should like an hour's time to consider the matter."
"That seems reasonable," agreed Judge Tomp-
kins. "Is that satisfactory to you, Mr. District
Attorney?"
The squire half arose from his chair. But be-
fore he could make reply the legal earthquake—
of which Mr. Tutt had remained in deadly fear
ever since Mr. Pennypacker had given his testi-
mony-occurred. The alibi shivered at its top
like a tree under the woodsman's ax, hung for a


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
167
1
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


168 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 per-
fectly 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 logi-
cal and demolishing argument the only sound to
be heard was the ticking of the official timepiece
on the court room wall, until Judge Tompkins


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow,
169
said in a constrained tone and with a glance full
of meaning at Mr. Tutt.
"The foreman has pointed out a fact of con-
siderable 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 de-
fense 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, al-
most was Mr. Tutt, who sat head in hands alone
in the stifling court room, gloomily pondering up-
on the manifold changes and chances of this mor-
tal 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 dis-
appeared; Mr. Tutt's hourly telephone messages


170 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 ex-
planation 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 ac-
cused in a criminal case is no match even for a


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
171
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


172 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 await-
ing the sentence of death. Did he appreciate the
situation? Was he cognizant of his peril? Cer-
tainly 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 Prob-
able," the thesis of which will be that it is the im-
probable which usually happens, and explain why.
The axiom that "fact is stranger than fiction" is


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 173
SEVE
based upon this truism. All of life is centered
around a struggle to make ourselves and every-
thing 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 some-
thing 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 ex-
penses. He knew nothing would come of it-
even if he secured a six months' adjournment.
He had never yet got anything from a detective


174
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 situa-
tion, the gist of which was that Skinny was going
to be hung.
Mr. Tutt, having reassured the tramp with re-
gard 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 nochalantly


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
175
sitting on an empty lemon crate smoking a cigar.
Mr. Tutt punched himself violently in the ribs.
Was it possible? Emerson, seeing the distin-
guished 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 wit-


176 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
ness 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 dur-
ing the progress of the trial had at times felt mo-
mentary twinges of apprehension-not, of con-
science-but lest his motives and conduct of the
prosecution should be impugned, he now felt se-
cure. The only person in the world-as he
thought-whose testimony could possibly subject
him to censure had providentially absented him-
self. 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 177
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 back-
ground 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 breath-
lessly 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


178 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 knowl-
edge 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 direc-
tion!
"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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 179
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 "Tog-
gery 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 be-
wilderment it suggested the weirdest possibilities.
Here was a murdered hermit with a hundred


180 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 dry-
ness 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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 181
"I don't see what that's got to do with any-
thing, 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 per-
son, 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 antici-
pated that he would.
"Hold on a minute!" directed his honor with
a perplexed air. "I don't understand. Why did


182 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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


the
1
Wil
IS
est
ed
er
a
B
d
5
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
183
declared. "However-we will not deal with it
Proceed with the trial."
but that needn't
Mason crept back to his seat. It was clear
that the judge had it in for him,
affect the outcome of the trial.
other jar-this time an even heavier one.
Then he got an-
"Charles Emerson," murmured Mr. Tutt
sweetly, "please take the stand-I have an addi-
tional question I wish to put to you in cross-
examination."
There was nothing in Emerson's recall to ex-
cite 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. Some-
thing had happened to him. He had shriveled-
nought else. With his eyes shifting uneasily the
district attorney sat fumbling with his papers, re-
fusing to meet those of the mill hand. Then he
arose and said in a husky voice which held no
conviction:
now.
"I object to the recallin' of this witness. He's
been examined once."
』ཝཾ
M


184
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"I overrule your objection.—Mr. Tutt may in-
terrogate him as fully as he wishes," retorted
Judge Tompkins sharply. He turned to Emer-
son.
"Where have you been? I understood you had
disappeared."
Emerson smiled sheepishly.
66
"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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
185
in
ad
d
e₁
e
se
I
O
:
"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.
the weather cock had veered.
"Anyhow I come back on the next train," fin-
ished Mr. Emerson, "an' I've been here right
along."
He too had observed that
"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?"


186 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 con-
servative 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 un-
certainty 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 187
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 fo-
cused 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 Tomp-
kins. "Remember that this is a very important
bit of evidence."
"Pretty near!" answered Emerson. "I'm satis-
fied fer myself that I did, but this bein' a court
o' law, mebbe I'd oughter be more certain to
-
ཉྙཝཱ-


188 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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' remem-
bered 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,


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 189
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 prose-
cutor 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.


190 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
Mason, ivory white, attempted to rise, but col-
lapsed 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 con-
tempt.
"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 contrib-
uted 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
191
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 Lum-
ber Mill blew four o'clock."
"I
guess that settles that!" remarked the fore-
man, 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


192 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
jury, and how the governor, upon the recom-
mendation 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, ac-
cording 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,


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
193
what was of vastly more importance, Skinny the
Tramp's alibi was definitely, finally and impreg-
nably 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 polite-
ly 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 ad-


194 1
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
mitted 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 pub-
lication, 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 195
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


196 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 hun-
gry."
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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
197
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 spec-
tators 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, sur-
prised 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 delib-
erate.
"Mr. Tutt," said Judge Tompkins, "I will wait


198 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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 what-
ever 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 per-
fectly plain case! What do you suppose is mak-
ing 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. Bet-
ting was now even on the result, with the odds
three to two on an ultimate disagreement. Evi-
dently 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 199
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 tip-
toed up the stairs to the topmost landing where
the sheriff unlocked another door, and after light-
ing 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, al-
though 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.


200 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"We're right over the jury room," he whis-
pered.
The attic was hot, dusty, close, and full of cob-
webs, suggestive of man-eating spiders, but en-
thused 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 incred-
ible 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 fore-
man 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
201
relief, "it's five minutes after midnight-Sat-
urday 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 be-
low,-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


202 The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
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.


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
203
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 con-
fessed 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


204
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
same softness in the air, the same flooding sun-
light 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 lumber-
man 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 al-
ways 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


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 205
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 her-
mit 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:


206
The Hermit of Turkey Hollow
"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 out-


The Hermit of Turkey Hollow 207
ward 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 scram-
bled to his feet.
The next instant he had plunged down the hill-
side towards the valley-after the rainbow!











DATE DUE
MAY 28 1987
GAYLORD
PRINTED IN U S.A