book, bound in
imitation red leather, and bearing the word "Accounts" in faded script
upon the cover. On a clean, blue-lined page of the book, in a cramped
handwriting, he would write in ink, the name, age, height, and weight of
the man he had just despatched out of life; also the hour and minute
when the drop fell, the time elapsing before the surgeons pronounced the
man dead; the disposition which had been made of the body, and any other
data which seemed to him pertinent to the record. Invariably he
concluded the entry thus: "Neck was broke by the fall. Everything passed
off smooth." From his first time of service he had never failed to make
such notations following a hanging, he being in this, as in all things,
methodical and exact.

The rest of the day, in all probabilities, would be given to small
devices of his own. If the season suited he might work in his little
truck garden at the back of the house, or if it were the fall of the
year he might go rabbit hunting; then again he might go for a walk. When
the evening paper came--Chickaloosa had two papers, a morning paper and
an evening paper--he would read through the account given of the event
at the prison, and would pencil any material errors which had crept into
the reporter's story, and then he would clip out the article and file it
away with a sheaf of similar clippings in the same bureau drawer where
he kept his account-book and his underclothing. This done he would eat
his supper, afterward washing and wiping the supper dishes and,
presently bedtime for him having arrived, he would go to bed and sleep
very soundly and very peacefully all night. Sometimes his heart trouble
brought on smothering spells which woke him up. He rarely had dreams,
and never any dreams unpleasantly associated with his avocation.
Probably never was there a man blessed with less of an imagination than
this same Tobias Dramm. It seemed almost providential, considering the
calling he followed, that he altogether lacked the faculty of
introspection, so that neither his memory nor his conscience ever
troubled him.

Thus far I have made no mention of his household, and for the very good
reason that he had none. In his youth he had not married. The forked
tongue of town slander had it that he was too stingy to support a wife,
and on top of that expense, to run the risk of having children to rear.
He had no close kindred excepting a distant cousin or two in
Chickaloosa. He kept no servan