tely forgotten. Now he lapsed into silence and all
communication was suspended, while he rocked silently in his great chair
and thought.

One day in passing the local poor-farm (and this is of my own
knowledge), he came upon a man beating a poor idiot with a whip. The
latter was incapable of reasoning and therefore of understanding why it
was that he was being beaten. The two were beside a wood-pile and the
demented one was crying. In a moment the old patriarch had jumped out of
his conveyance, leaped over the fence, and confronted the amazed
attendant with an uplifted arm.

"Not another lick!" he fairly shouted. "What do you mean by striking an
idiot?"

"Why," explained the attendant, "I want him to carry in the wood, and he
won't do it."

"It is not his place to bring in the wood. He isn't put here for that,
and in the next place he can't understand what you mean. He's put here
to be taken care of. Don't you dare strike him again. I'll see about
this, and you."

Knowing his interrupter well, his position and power in the community,
the man endeavored to explain that some work must be done by the
inmates, and that this one was refractory. The only way he had of making
him understand was by whipping him.

"Not another word," the old man blustered, overawing the county
hireling. "You've done a wrong, and you know it. I'll see to this," and
off he bustled to the county courthouse, leaving the transgressor so
badly frightened that whips thereafter were carefully concealed, in this
institution at least. The court, which was held in his home town, was
not in session at the time, and only the clerk was present when he came
tramping down the aisle and stood before the latter with his right hand
uplifted in the position of one about to make oath.

"Swear me," he called solemnly, and without further explanation, as the
latter stared at him. "I want you to take this testimony under oath."

The clerk knew well enough the remarkable characteristics of his guest,
whose actions were only too often inexplicable from the ground point of
policy and convention. Without ado, after swearing him, he got out ink
and paper, and the patriarch began.

"I saw," he said, "in the yard of the county farm of this county, not
over an hour ago, a poor helpless idiot, too weak-minded to understand
what was required of him, and put in that institution by the people of
this county to be cared for, being beaten with a cowhide by Mark
Sheffels,