mm lay on his face upon the wet earth, with the rain beating down
on him, sobbing with choking gulps that wrenched him cruelly, biting at
the bonds on his wrists until the sound of breaking teeth gritted in the
air. Finally, in the hopeless, helpless frenzy of his agony he beat his
arms up and down until the bracelets struck squarely on a flat stone and
the force of the blow sent the cuffs home to the last notch so that they
pressed harder and faster than ever upon the tortured wrist bones.

When he had wasted ten or fifteen minutes in a vain search the farmer
went shivering back indoors to dry out his wet shirt. But the groveling
figure in the brushpile lay for a long time where it was, only stirring
a little while the rain dripped steadily down on everything.

* * * * *

The wreck was on a Tuesday evening. Early on the Saturday morning
following the chief of police, who was likewise the whole of the day
police force in the town of Westfield, nine miles from the place where
the collision occurred, heard a peculiar, strangely weak knocking at
the front door of his cottage, where he also had his office. The door
was a Dutch door, sawed through the middle, so that the top half might
be opened independently, leaving the lower panel fast. He swung this top
half back.

A face was framed in the opening--an indescribably dirty, unutterably
weary face, with matted white hair and a rime of whitish beard stubble
on the jaws. It was fallen in and sunken and it drooped on the chest of
its owner. The mouth, swollen and pulpy, as if from repeated hard blows,
hung agape, and between the purplish parted lips showed the stumps of
broken teeth. The eyes blinked weakly at the chief from under lids as
colorless as the eyelids of a corpse. The bare white head was filthy
with plastered mud and twigs, and dripping wet.

"Hello, there!" said the chief, startled at this apparition. "What do
you want?"

With a movement that told of straining effort the lolled head came up
off the chest. The thin, corded neck stiffened back, rising from a
dirty, collarless neckband. The Adam's apple bulged out prominently, as
big as a pigeon's egg.

"I have come," said the specter in a wheezing rasp of a voice which the
chief could hardly hear--"I have come to surrender myself. I am Hobart
W. Trimm."

"I guess you got another thing comin'," said the chief, who was by way
of being a neighborhood wag. "When last seen Hobart W