o the other, in mute despair. They foresaw many
years of imprisonment for a crime which they had not committed.

The constable was hurrying his prisoners toward the door, when there was
a sudden stir on the outskirts of the crowd. Old Parson Payne was
pushing his way in, followed by a tall young man, who, in comparison
with the mountaineers, seemed wonderfully prosperous and well-clad, and
very fresh and breezy.

"You're all on the wrong track!" he cried.

And his story proved this, though it was simple enough.

He was sojourning in the mountains with some friends on a "camp-hunt,"
and the previous evening he had chanced to lose his way in the woods.
When night and the storm came on, he was perhaps five miles from camp.
He mistook the little "church-house" for a dwelling, and dismounting, he
hitched his horse in the laurel, intending to ask for shelter for the
night. As he stepped upon the porch, however, he caught a glimpse,
through the chinking, of the interior, and he perceived that the
building was a church. There were benches and a rude pulpit. The next
instant, his attention was riveted by the sight of two men, one of whom
had drawn a knife upon the other, quarreling over a roll of money. He
stood rooted to the spot in surprise. Gradually, he began to understand
the villainy afoot, for he overheard all that they said to each other,
and afterward to Jim. He saw one of the men cut the bit from the
comforter, wrap the pocket-book in it, and hide it away, and he
witnessed a dispute between them, which went on in dumb show behind the
boy's back, as to which of two bills should be knotted in the
handkerchief which they twisted into the comforter.

The constable was pressing him to describe the appearance of the
ruffians.

"Why," said the stranger, "one of them was long, and lank, and
loose-jointed, and had sandy hair, and"--He paused abruptly, cudgeling
his memory for something more distinctive, for this description would
apply to half the men in the room, and thus it would be impossible to
identify and capture the robbers.

"He hedn't no thumb sca'cely on his lef' hand," piped out Jim, holding
up his own grimy paw, and looking at it with squinting intensity as he
crooked it at the first joint, to imitate the maimed hand.

"No thumb!" exclaimed the constable excitedly. "Amos Brierwood fur a
thousand!"

Jim nodded his head intelligently, with sudden recollection. "That air
the name ez the chunky man gin him wh