"the little bye in his
red coat" sitting on the floor of the vehicle, he was off like a cyclone
and out of sight in a moment. Almost immediately afterward the Irishman
heard the sharp crack of a rifle, and a tumultuous crash, as of some
heavy fall into the depths of the valley. To his mind, the sound of the
weapon intimated some catastrophe, and he said nothing at the time as to
his meeting with Mr. Briscoe. That circumstance seemed to him of no
importance. He was afraid of being numbered among the suspects if any
evil deed had been done. He heard the searching parties out all night,
and it was a terrible sound! "It was too aisy fur a poor man to be laid
by the heels fur a job he niver done, bedad, as was the case at present."
He permitted himself, however, to be persuaded to let a charge of
vagrancy be entered against him and go to jail, really to be held as a
witness in the event of more developments in the Briscoe case; for the
authorities desired that no arrests in that connection should be made
public until the significance of the fact that at the time of the tragedy
the child was wearing the coat--afterward found hanging loose, without a
rent or a blemish, on the tree in the valley--should be fully exploited.
If it were indeed a direful instance of murder and abduction, as the
sheriff now believed, he wished the miscreants to rest unwitting of the
activity of the officers and the menace of discovery.

"But it seems a pity for the poor innocent Irishman to have to stay in
jail. How good of him to consent!" exclaimed Mrs. Marable pathetically.

The sheriff was all unacclimated to the suave altruism of fashionable
circles. His literal eyebrows went up to an angle of forty-five degrees;
he turned his belittling eyes on Mrs. Marable, as if she were a very
inconsiderable species of wren, suddenly developing a capacity for
disproportionate mischief. "Not at all, madam," he made haste to say. "He
can be legally held for a witness, lest he get away and out of reach of a
subpoena. It is the right of the State, and of Mrs. Briscoe as well,
who will doubtless join the public prosecution. We are asking nothing of
nobody, and taking nothing off nobody, neither."

"But I should like," said Lillian, "to arrange that he shall suffer no
hardship. I shall be happy to defray any expense to make him thoroughly
comfortable."

The sheriff looked down on feminine intelligence. The law was exclusively
man's affair. He made it and admi