"I never meant to harm my wife!" screamed Hoskins in an agony
of fear. "We had had words, and I meant nothing but to push her
aside so I could pass. But she fell downstairs. It wasn't my
fault that her neck was broken!"

"Whose neck was broken?" demanded the farmer.

"My wife's. But I never meant to do it."

"Humph!" remarked the Overseer of the Poor. "If your wife broke
her neck, Ed Hoskins, she doesn't know it yet. She's doing some
pretty husky work. She's the hired help over at St. Ingram's.
She went there to work after you went away."

"Don't try to fool me," trembled Hoskins. "Don't! My wife's
dead, and now I've got to go and pay the penalty of a crime I
never meant to commit."

"What you need, Ed," observed the Overseer of the Poor, "is a
bath, a couple of square meals, a little daylight, and a freight
load of common horse sense. Come out of this place. We'll take
you to your wife, and you'll find that she's very much alive,
and heart-broken over your running away from her. She's fretting
because she thinks her own conduct made you run away from her."

"I guess we don't belong here," murmured Dick to his chums. "Suppose
we hurry down to the camp."

Five minutes later the two farmers also reached camp, holding
Hoskins between them.

"It all shows what a man's fool way of reasoning---or, rather,
not reasoning---can bring him to," explained the Overseer of the
Poor in a low voice to the boys. "Ed Hoskins isn't exactly one
of life's heavyweights, but he was always a good enough fellow,
and industrious. He married a good-hearted, simple-minded girl,
and they were mighty devoted to each other. But, back the last
of May, Ed and his wife had a little bit of a tiff. They were
standing near the top of the stairs in their house. Ed, according
to his own story, went to push her aside so he could go downstairs,
when his wife lost her balance and fell half way down the stairs.
She fainted, I reckon, and Ed, in a great fright, thought she
had broken her neck. So he ran down the stairs past her, got
out of the house with a pair of blankets, a little food and a
hatchet, and started up this miserable road in the night time.
He says he knew he'd have to go to the electric chair some day
for his deed, but he wanted to come up here and prepare his soul
before he gave up his life. He says he got along all right until
you boys came up here on purpose to find him and run him down
for the law. He tells