details of that
momentous occasion, and he had no sooner mentioned the name of Phineas
Copenny, or "Phinny 'Penny," in his infantile perversion, than the North
Carolina official turned aside and indited a telegram to the sheriff of
the county in Tennessee where the crime had been committed.

None of his capacity to make himself understood had the boy lost by the
craft of the moonshiners in placing him where he would never hear an
English word and was likely to forget the language. A very coherent story
he told still later when he was brought into the criminal court at
Shaftesville, being the capital of the county in Tennessee where the deed
was perpetrated, and confronted by Copenny. One of the moonshiners,
arrested on suspicion of complicity with the murder, had turned State's
evidence and had given testimony as to the details of the plot to ambush
the revenue officer, and the delegation of Phineas Copenny and two others
to execute it. Another testified that he had afterward heard of the
murderous plan and of the mistake in the identity of the victim; but as
neither of these parties was present at the catastrophe, the story of the
child was relied on as an eye-witness to corroborate this proof. The
admission of his testimony was hotly contested because of his tender
years, despite the wide inclusiveness of the statute, and its inadequacy
would possibly have resulted in a reversal of the case had an appeal been
taken. But Phineas Copenny made no motion for a new trial and desired no
appeal. He had feared, throughout, the possible capture and conclusive
testimony of Drann and Holvey, and, lest a worse thing befall him, he
accepted a sentence of a long term in the penitentiary. In view of the
turpitude of "lying in wait," though a matter of inference and not proof,
he doubted the saving grace of that anomaly of the Tennessee law that in
order to constitute murder in the first degree the victim of a
premeditated slaughter must be the person intended to be slain.

There was scant doubt as to his guilt in the minds of the jury. The boy
singled out Copenny from a crowd in which he had been placed to test his
recognition by the little witness. He remembered the man's name, and
called him by it. He gave an excited account of the shooting, although
this was the least intelligible part of his testimony, for he often
interrupted himself to exclaim, "Pop-gun--_bang!_" disconnectedly, as
the scene renewed itself in his memory. He e