ter
leisure. Bolt upright, a heavy hand on either big-boned knee, his shaven
jowl drooping in fleshy folds over his high stiff collar, he sat gazing
into the fire with round, small, gray, bullet-like eyes, while the top of
his bald head grew pink and shining with warmth. He had a loud,
countrified voice in his normal speech, that gave an intimation of a
habit of hallooing to hounds in a fox-chase, or calling the cattle on a
thousand hills, but it had sunk to a mysterious undertone when he next
spoke, expressive of the importance of the disclosure he was about to
make.

A few days previous, he said, he had chanced to arrest an Irish mechanic
who, during the season, had been employed at the neighboring hotel in
replacing some plaster that had fallen by reason of leakage. Since then,
a hard drinking man, he had been idly loafing, occasionally jobbing,
about the country, but the offence charged was that of being concerned in
a wholesale dynamiting of fish in the Tennessee River some months ago.
The man protested violently against his arrest, being unable to procure
bail, and declared he could prove an alibi but for fear that a worse
thing befall him. This singular statement so stimulated the officer's
curiosity that his craft was enlisted to elicit the whole story. Little
by little he secured its details. It seemed that on the day when the fish
were dynamited contrary to law, the Irishman was some thirty miles
distant from the spot--the day of the Briscoe tragedy. He believed that
he was the last man who had seen Briscoe alive--unless indeed he were
done to death. He was afoot, walking in the county road, not more than
two miles from the vacant hotel, when he saw a dog-cart coming like the
wind toward him. The gentleman, driving a splendid mare, checked his
speed on catching sight of him, and called out to him. Upon approaching,
he recognized Mr. Briscoe, whom he had often seen when at work at the
neighboring hotel. On this occasion Mr. Briscoe asked him to hold the
mare while he slipped a coat on the little boy whom he had in the
dog-cart with him--a red coat it was--for it took all he knew to drive
the mare with both hands. And the Irishman declared it took all _he_
knew to hold the mare for the single minute required to slip the child
into the coat. Twice the plunging animal lifted him off his feet as he
swung to the bit. But the gentleman did not forget to pay him royally.
Mr. Briscoe tossed him a dollar, and then, with