 The Mockingbird by Ambrose Bierce. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Time, a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the early autumn of 1861. The Place, a forest heart in the mountain region of southwestern Virginia. Private gray rock of the Federal Army is discovered seated comfortably at the root of a great pine tree, against which he leans his legs extended straight along the ground, his rifle lying across his thighs, his hands clasped in order that they may not fall away to his sides resting upon the barrel of the weapon. The contact of the back of his head with the tree has pushed his cap downward over his eyes, almost concealing them. One seeing him would say that he slept. Private gray rock did not sleep. To have done so would have imperiled the interests of the United States, for he was a long way outside the lines and subject to capture or death at the hands of the enemy. Moreover, he was in a frame of mind unfavorable to repose. The cause of his perturbation of spirit was this. During the previous night he had served on the picket guard and had been posted as a centennial in this very forest. The night was clear, though moonless, but in the gloom of the wood the darkness was deep. Gray rock's post was at a considerable distance from those to right and left, for the pickets had been thrown out a needless distance from the camp, making the line too long for the force, detailed to occupy it. The war was young, and military camp entertained the error that while sleeping, they were better protected by thin lines a long way out toward the enemy than by thicker ones close in, and surely they needed as long notice as possible of an enemy's approach, for they were at the time addicted to the practice of undressing, than which nothing could be more unsoldierly. On the morning of the memorable 6th of April at Shiloh many of Grant's men, when spitted on Confederate bayonets, were as naked as civilians, but it should be allowed that this was not because of any defect in their picket line. Their error was of another sort, they had no pickets. This is perhaps a vain digression, I should not care to undertake the interest. The reader in the fate of an army, what we have here to consider is that of private gray rock. For two hours after he had been left at his lonely post that Saturday night, he stood stock still, leaning against the truck of a large tree, staring into the darkness in his front, and trying to recognize known objects, for he had been posted at the same spot during the day, but all was now different. He saw nothing in detail, but only groups of things, whose shapes not observed, when there was something more of them to observe, were now unfamiliar. They seem not to have been there before. A landscape that is all trees and undergrowth moreover, lacks definition, is confused and without accentuated points upon which attention can gain a foothold. Add the gloom of a moonless night, and is something more than great natural intelligence, and a city education is required to preserve one's knowledge of direction. And that is how it occurred that private gray rock, after vigilantly watching the spaces in his front, and then in prudently executing a circumspection of his whole dimly visible environment, silently walking around his tree to accomplish it, lost his bearings and seriously impaired his usefulness as a sentinel, lost at his post, unable to stay in which direction to look for an enemy's approach, and in which lay the sleeping camp, for whose security he was accountable with his life, conscious to, of many other awkward feature of the situation, and of considerations affecting his own safety. Private gray rock was profoundly disquieted, nor was he given time to recover his twangwility, for almost at the moment that he realized his awkward predicament, he heard a stir of leaves and a snap of fallen twigs, and turning with a stilled heart in the direction, once it came, saw in the gloom the indistinct outlines of a human figure. Halt shouted private gray rock, peremptorily as in duty bound, backing up the command with the sharp metallic snap of his cocking rifle. Who goes there? There was no answer. At least there was an instance, hesitation, the answer, if it came, was lost in a report of sentinel's rifle, in the silence of the night, and the forest sound was deafening, and hardly had it died away when it was repeated by the pieces of the pickets to the right and left, a sympathetic fuselade. For two hours every unconverted civilian of them had been evolving enemies from his imagination, and peopeling the woods in his front with them, and gray rock shot has started the hole encroaching host into visible existence, having fired all retreated breathless to the reserves, all but gray rock, who did not know in what direction to retreat, when no enemy appearing, the row's camp two miles away had undressed and got itself into bed again, and the pocket line was cautiously re-established, he was discovered bravely holding his ground, and was complimented by the officer of the guard as the one soldier of that devoted band who could rightly be considered the moral equivalent of that uncommon unit of value. A whoop in hell. In the meantime, however, gray rock had made a close but unavailing search for the mortal part of the intruder, at whom he had fired, and whom he had Markman's intuitive sense of having hit, for he was one of those born experts who shoot without aim by an insisting sense of direction, and are nearly as dangerous by night as by day. During a full half of his twenty-four years, he had been a terror to the targets of all the shooting galleries in three cities, unable now to produce his dead game. He had the discretion to hold his tongue, and was glad to observe, in his offer and comrades' natural assumption, that not having run away, he had seen nothing hostile. His honorable mention had been earned by not running away anyhow. Nevertheless, private gray rock was far from satisfied with the night's adventure, and when the next day he made some fair enough pretext to apply for a pass to go outside the lines, and the general commanding promptly granted it in recognition of his bravery, the night before he passed out at the point where that had been displayed, telling the sentinel, then on duty, there that he had lost something, which was true enough. He renewed the search for the person whom he supposed himself to have a shot, and whom, if only wounded, he hoped to trail by the blood. He was no more successful by daylight than he had been in the darkness, and, after covering a wide area and boldly penetrating a long distance into the Confederacy, he gave up the search, somewhat fatigued, seated himself at the root of the great pine tree, where we have seen him, and indulged his disappointment. It is not to be inferred that gray rocks was the charge in of a cruel nature, balked of his bloody deed, in the clear large eyes, finally wrought lips and brought forehead of that young man one could read quite another story, and in point of fact his character was a singularly fallacious compound of boldness and sensibility, courage and conscience. I find myself disappointed, he said to himself, sitting there at the bottom of a golden haze, submerging the forest like a subtler sea, disappointed and failing to discover a fellow man dead by my hand. Do I then really wish that I had taken life in the performance of a duty as well as performed without? What more could I wish? If any danger threatened, my shot averted it. That is, what I was there to do. No, I am glad indeed, if no human life was needlessly extinguished by me. But I am in a false position. I have suffered myself to be complimented by my officers and envied by my comrades. The camp is ringing with praise of my courage. That is not just. I know myself courageous, but this praise is for specific acts which I did not perform or performed otherwise. It is believed that I remained at my post bravely without firing, whereas it was I who began the fuselage. And I did not retreat in the general alarm because bewildered. What then shall I do? Explain that I saw an enemy and fired. They have all said that of themselves, yet none believes it. Shall I tell a truth which, discrediting my courage, will I have the effect of a lie? Ah, it is an ugly business altogether. I wish to God I could find my man. And so wishing private gray rock overcome at last by a langore of the afternoon and lulled by the stilly sounds of insects, droning and pausing in certain fragrant shrubs so far forgot the interests of the United States as to fall asleep and expose himself to capture and sleeping he dreamed. He thought himself a boy living in a far, fair land by the border of a great river upon which the tall steamboats moved grandly up and down beneath their towering evolutions of black smoke, which announced them long before they had rounded the bends and marked their movements when miles out of sight. With them always, as his sight as he watched them, was one to whom he gave his heart and soul and love a twin brother. Together they strolled along the banks of the stream, together explored the fields, lying farther away from it and gathered pugnant mints and sticks of fragrant sassafras in the hills overlooking all, beyond which lay the realm of conjecture, and from which, looking southward across the great river, they caught glimpses of the enchanted land. Hand in hand, the heart in heart they too, the only children of a widowed mother, walked in paths of light through valleys of peace. Seeing new things under a new sun, and though all the golden days floated once on season sound, the rich, thrilling melody of a mockingbird in a cage by the cottage door, it pervaded and possessed all the spiritual intervals of the dream, like a musical benediction. The joyous bird was always in song, its infidelity various notes seemed to flow from its throat, effortless in bubbles and rills at each heartbeat, like the waters of a pulsing spring, that fresh, clear melody seemed, indeed the spirit of the scene, the meaning and interpretation, the sense of the mysteries of life and love. But there came a time when the days of the dream grew dark with sorrow, in a rain of tears, the good mother was dead, the metal-side home was the great river was broken up, and the brothers were parted, between two of their kinsmen. William, the dreamer, went to live in a populous city in the realm of conjecture, and John, crossing the river into the enchanted land, was taken into a distant region, whose people and their lives and ways were said to be strange and wicked. To him, in the distribution of the dead mother's estate, had fallen all that they deemed of value, the mockingbird, they could be divided, but it could not, so it was carried away into the strange country, and the world of William knew it no more forever, yet still through the after-time of his loneliness its song filled all the dream, and seemed always sounding in his ear and in his heart. The kinsmen who had adopted the boys were enemies, holding no communication, for time letters full of boyish bravado, and both full narratives of the new and larger experience, grotesque descriptions of their widening lives and the new worlds they had conquered, the past between them, but these gradually became less frequent, and with William's removal to another and greater city seas altogether, but ever though it all ran the song of a mockingbird, and when the dreamer opened his eyes and stared through the vistas of the pine forest, the cessation of the music first apprired him that he was awake. The sun was low and red in the west, the level rays projected from the trunk of each giant pine a wall of shadow traversing, the golden haze to eastward until light and shade were blended, in undistinguishable blue, private grey rock rose to his feet, look cautiously about him, shouldered his rifle and set off toward camp, he had gone perhaps a half mile and was passing a thicket of laurel when a bird rose the mist of it and perching on the branch of a tree above, poured from its joyous breast so inexhaustible floods of song, as but one of all God's creatures can utter in his praise, there was little in that, it was only to open the bill and breathe, yet the man stopped as if struck, stopped and let fall his rifle, looked upward at the bird, covered his eyes with the hands and wept like a child, for the moment he was indeed a child in spirit and in memory, dwelling again by the great river over against the enchanted land. Then with an effort of the will he pulled himself together, picked up his weapon and audibly damning himself for an idiot strode on, passing an opening that reached into the heart of the little thicket, he looked in and there supine upon the earth, its arms all abroad, its grey uniform stained with a single spot of blood upon the breast, its white face turned sharply upward and backward, lay the image of himself, the body of John Greyrock, dead of a gunshot wound and still warm, he had found his man. As the unfortunate soldier knelt beside that masterwork of civil war, the shrilling bird upon the bow overhead stilled her song and flushed with sunset's crimson glory, glided silently away through the solid spaces of the wood. At roll call, that evening in the federal camp, the name William Greyrock brought no response, nor ever again thereafter. End of The Mockingbird by Ambrose Beers Read by Chris Caron A Desperate Adventure by Max Adela This is a LibriVox Recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Wanted Four persons who are bent upon commanding Suicide to engage in a hazardous adventure. Apply EDC to Captain Cowgirl, number Dash, blank street of the 9 o'clock in the morning. Captain Cowgirl inserted the ever advertisement in three of the morning papers. We'd only find the expectation that he'd be responded to. But the result was that, between 9 o'clock and noon, five men and two women called at his office to inquire respecting the nature of the proposed adventure and to offer their services in the event that it should involve nothing of a criminal character. Of the seven, Captain Cowgirl selected four, three men and one young woman. And when he had dismissed the others, he sat the door and said to the four applicants, What I wanted you for was this. I have made up my mind that the North Pole can never be reached by an exploring party travelling upon ships and slages. The only route that is possibly practicable is through the air. And the only available vehicle, of course, is a balloon. But an atom to reach the pole in a balloon must expose the explorers to desperate risks. And it occurred to me that those risks had better be taken by persons who do not value their lives than by persons who do. It has always seemed to me that a part of the scene of suicide lies in the fact that the life that was eternally sacrificed might have been expanded in the cause which would have comfort benefits directly or indirectly upon the human race. I have a love and superbly cute balloon which will be totally stocked for a voyage to dark decreases. And among other things, it will count in apparatus for making fresh supplies of hydrogen gas. Are you four persons willing to make the required attempts in this balloon? All four of the visitors answered, Yes. Were you going to sacrifice your lives at any rate? And a formative answer was given by the four. Permit me to take your names. Said Captain Cargill, and he wrote them down as follows. William P. Crutter, Dr. Henry O'Hagan, Admiral John Willem, Mary Darmond. Mr. Crutter was a man apparently of about 60 years, and some addressed many firstly gentlemen, but of the flushed face which indicated that he had perhaps indulged to some extent in dissipation. Dr. O'Hagan was thin, pallid and care-worn. He looked as if he were ill, and as if all joy were dead in his heart. Mr. John will appear to be a walking man, but his countenance, sad as it was, was full of intelligence, and his manner rose out of a man who had occupied his social position much above the lowest. Mr. O'Hagan was sad with an air of desiccation, her hands in her lap, a teen unaffected shawl pinned about her, and with her pale cheeks suggestive of hunger and mental suffering. My hope, said Captain Cargill, is that he will safely reach his destination and safely return, but you fully understand that the chances are against you. For my own protection, I'll ask you to certify in writing that you go with full knowledge of the risks. I'll inflate the balloon tomorrow. The after tomorrow come to this office at nine o'clock, and you shall then make the ascent at once. On the appointed day, the four volunteers appeared and Captain Cargill drove with them in a carriage to a yard in the outskirts of the city, where the balloon inflated and swaying to and fro in the wind was held to the outwith stout robes. The three men were supplied with warm clothing, but Mr. O'Hagan had only a threadbare shawl, and so Captain Cargill gave her his overcoat and two blankets which he took from the carriage. While the voyageers were taking their places in the commodious current touched to the balloon, a young man entered the yard and hurriedly approached Captain Cargill. I am going with the balloon, he said, almost fiercely, and hardly dining to look at the Captain. Impossible, said the Captain. The crew is made up. You don't comprehend our purpose. Yes, I do, said the young man. These people are rude with suicides and they are strutting for the pole. I am going along. But my dear sir, begin the Captain in your tone of expostulation. I will go or I will slay myself right here before you. These people are not any more tired of life than I am. Let him come, said Dr. O'Hagan gloomily. But, written Captain Cargill, I am afraid the balloon will be overloaded. I am going anyhow, said the young man, as he lived into the car. Captain Cargill sighed and said, Well, have your own way about it. My name is John Wyndon, remarked I into that. I'll tell you, so that you will know if anyone curse after me. But I don't imagine anybody will. Then Captain Cargill bit farewell to the party. The ropes were loosened and the balloon went sailing swiftly towards the clouds. Dr. O'Hagan was the navigator in charge. Presently a north-easternly current of wind struck the airship and it began to move with great rapidity upon a horizontal line. For a long time, nobody in the cospo. Indeed, the voyagers scarcely looked at each other and none had enough curiosity to peer over the side upon the glorious landscape they lay beneath. But after a while, Mr. Crata, gazing at Miss Domodsen, Are you fully resolved upon self-destruction? Yes, she replied. So am I, said Mr. Crata. So am I, remarked Mr. Wyndon. So am I, objected Mr. John Wyndon. And I also, added Dr. O'Hagan. Even if we reach the foal safely and return, I shall not want to leave, said Mr. Crata. Neither shall I, said Mr. Armand. Nor I, remarked Mr. Wyndon. Nor I, added Dr. O'Hagan and Mr. John Wyndon in a breath. Then there was silence for the space of half an hour or more. Mr. Crata then remarked, Do you know I find this to be rather a pleasant experience, sailing along here through the ether, calmly, far above the distractions of the world. If I am not so miserable, I think I should really enjoy it. I am too unhappy to enjoy anything, said Miss Domodsen. But this, I confess, is not unpleasant. Pleasant enough, remarked Mr. Wyndon. If a man had no anguish in his soul, I had no idea that there was so much acceleration in the upper regions of the atmosphere, said Dr. O'Hagan, rather cheery. I think I feel better myself, said Mr. John Wyndon. It is very strange, objected Mr. Crata, addressing Miss Domodsen, that young people like you and Mr. Wyndon here should be wary of life. That an old man like me should long for that is comprehensible. But why do you wish to die? Neither Mr. Wyndon nor Miss Domodsen made any response. I'll tell you, said Dr. O'Hagan, throwing a bag of balustrove of wood to check the descent of the balloon. We are all going to destruction together, and why should we not, as companions in misery, unfollow our beliefs to each other? It would be very proper, I think, said Mr. Crata, and I will begin if the rest will consent to follow. The other four travellers agreed to do so. Well, I haven't much to tell, said Mr. Crata. The fact is, I have always had plenty of money with which to live in idleness and luxury, and I have so lived. I have tried every kind of pleasure life can afford and money quay, and I have reached a condition of satiety. Moreover, I have ruined my decision, and I have now suffered from chronic dyspepsia of a horrible kind. This makes existence a burden. I am eager to quit it. That is the whole story. How strange the difference between us, said Dr. Rohan. I have been deeply engaged in the practice of my proficient for many years, and I have not only worn out and broken down to overwork. I am nervous, exhausted, irritable and wretched. But I have lost my savings in a speculative venture and cannot rest. I must study to work or die. That is partly my case, said Mr. Darmond. I am frameless and poor. I cannot earn enough by saving too much by surfacing food, and I can no longer face the misery that I have endured for so many years. I have preferred that a thousand times. And I, said Mr. Chandler, am a disabundant inventor. I have four years laboured upon the construction of a small consumer, but now that it is done I have not money enough to pay for a patent, and I am starving. After trying everywhere to obtain assistance, I have resolved to give up the struggle and to find refuge in the grave. Mr. Rowan then cleared his throat once or twice before beginning his story. He seemed to labour under some embarrassment. The truth is, he said, I was rejected last night by a young lady whom I love. And I made up my mind that life without her would not be worth living. Nobody spoke for some time. And then Dr. O'Hagan said, The balloon is falling, and instead of throwing out ballast, I think it might be better perhaps to let it come down and tie it to a tree and make a fresh start with additional gas in the morning. The other aeronauts gave their approval to this plan, and Dr. O'Hagan trialled to grab it. It caught up on a tree top, and after some difficulty the balloon was brought down and tied fast, while the whole party stepped out of the car. It was wild and desolate place, but the four men soon started a fire, and while Mr. Wyndon and Mr. John were prepared supper, Dr. O'Hagan and Mr. Crutter went to work to iron some kind of shelter for Mr. O'Hagan for the night. After supper, the five people gathered about the fire, and they really seemed to be growth out cheerfulness in the party. I have been thinking, said Mr. Crutter, for the outrageous shame it is that these four children here, pointing to Mr. O'Hagan should actually be in want of food while I have more money than I know what to do with it. I'll tell you what, Mr. O'Hagan, if you will agree to go back, you can have my whole fortune. I have left it to an asylum, but I'll write a new will now and tell you where you can find the other one, so as to tear it up. I don't want to go back, said Mr. O'Hagan. I would defy your will, said Mr. Wyndon. It's a shame for you to go up on such an awful journey as this. And I have been thinking, Mr. Johnville, since you spoke about your small conjurement at my father, who is a wealthy iron milowner, has offered a large reward for a perfect contribution of that sort. If yours is a good one, he will help you to fortune. I wish I had known that yesterday, said Mr. Johnville. Yes, said Dr. O'Hagan. And if I had known that Mr. Crater here has been driven to suicide by these peps here, I could have helped him, for I have been very successful in treating that complaint. Let me examine you, Mr. Crater, yes? Said the doctor after expanding a few moments looking at and talking to Mr. Crater. I feel certain I can cure you. I would have given you half my fortune yesterday for such an assurance, said Mr. Crater. But it is not too late. If I had met you then, said the doctor, I should not have been here now. Can't we all go back again? Asked Mr. Johnville. Impossible, said Dr. O'Hagan. I've got nothing to go back for, said Mr. Wyndon. There is no remedy for my trouble that I can perceive. There are other young ladies who could make good wives, said Mr. Crater. Well, I know, but said Mr. Wyndon, hesitating and looking furtively at Mr. Dermot. Mr. Dermot blashed. Suppose we rest for the night and sleep on the matter, said Dr. O'Hagan. There is no use being in a hurry. Mr. Dermot returned to sleep beneath a shelter of bars where we strewn some pine and a hamlet of branches. Dr. O'Hagan covered carefully with the blankets and then the foreman stretched themselves by the fire The conversation between the travellers must inevitably have had a good effect. The serious remedy for a morbid propensity to brood over our own troubles is to have our sympathy excited for the troubles of other people. After breakfast in the morning, Mr. Crater, I have solemnly considered all that was said last night, and I have a proposition to make. Dr. O'Hagan, if you will return with Mr. Dermot and Mr. Johnville, you three may divide my fortune between you. And Mr. Wyndon can give a letter to his father to Mr. Johnville about the smoke consumer. And dear Mr. Wyndon, and I will continue journey together. How will that do? I am willing to drop off and return, said Mr. Johnville. I will go only on one condition. You will go also, said Dr. O'Hagan. I will make you a well man, if you agree. But, said Mr. Crater, it would be a shame to have Wyndon here alone with this balloon. No, I have had enough of life. I will proceed on the voyage. There is a good deal of force in what the doctor sees to, remarked Mr. Wyndon. Why, you are not thinking about backing up too, are you? Inquired Mr. Crater. Well, I don't know, said Mr. Wyndon, looking half ashamed. It seems to me last night when I got to thinking about it, that the omen's corn is hardly water man's life, and I... You are right, said Mr. Crater. It isn't. Suppose we put the matter in this way. If Dr. O'Hagan cures me, I will pay him $50,000 in cash. And I will go into partnership with Mr. Johnville in his invention. We can see your father about it. And you can return to him while I add up Mr. Darmott as my daughter. I had thought, said Mr. Wyndon, of a slightly different plan, but possibly it could be carried out. What was there? Asked Dr. O'Hagan. Perhaps. But no, there is no use of mentioning it. I'll do it, said Mr. Crater. We are in the opinions of all hands. I did think, said Mr. Wyndon, that possibly Mr. Darmott instead of becoming your daughter would consent to become my wife. Would you enter in such a proposition, Mr. Darmott? Mr. Darmott hung her head and seemed to be covered in confusion. I'll think about it, she said. That means she will give her consent, said Mr. Crater, smiling. Later come with me whilst he is thinking the matter over. Are you all agreed to my plan? Everybody expert has sent to it and everybody seemed very happy. Why, what is that? Suddenly exclaimed Mr. Darmott pointing to a distant object above them. I very believe that is our balloon, said Dr. O'Hagan. Yes, it is gone. It must have broken loose while we were at breakfast. Oh well, said Mr. Crater. Let it go, who cares? I'll pay Captain Cowgirl for his losses and now let us see about getting home. Mr. Wyndon and Mr. Johnville started to hunt for a convience and in about two hours they returned with one. The nearest railway station was 13 miles away but in two more hours the border reached it and while Mr. Crater purchased tickets for a coming train Dr. O'Hagan went into the telegraph office and sent the following dispatch. Captain W. A. Cowgirl balloon escaped but he also perfectly happy will reach home tomorrow morning signed Henry O'Hagan and of A Desperate Adventure by Max Adela read by Ohm123 A blaze on parred huff by Florence Finch Kelly This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Read by Larry Kaplan One summer night I was on a train that was speeding eastward across southern New Mexico It was one of the white nights of that region when the full moon shining like sunlighted snow and hanging so low in the sky that it seems to be dropping earthward fills the clear dry air with a silvery radiance and floods the barren plain with a transfiguring whiteness in which the grey sands glimmer as if with some unearthly light of their own. The day had been long, wearysome and unspeakably hot and dusty and with the coming of this beautiful night and its cool breezes most of the passengers but took themselves to the car steps and platforms where they lingered until we reached the little town in the evening. As the train stopped we saw that apparently the entire population of the village was crowded inside the station house. One after another men came cautiously out upon the platform carrying guns in their hands and casting long anxious looks across the plain. Their set faces and ready revolvers and rifles showed that it was no ordinary matter which had sent the whole town They told us that a man had come running into town a little while before and falling headlong exhausted at the feet of the first person he met had cried out that the Apaches were coming. Hastily revived and cared for he explained that the Indians had attacked the cattle camp 10 or 12 miles south of Seapar where he and some other cowboys had been making a round up and killed all by himself. He had managed to creep out undiscovered and had run at the top of his speed all the way to Seapar to bring the warning. He said that the Apaches in a large band numbering at least 100 had surprised the camp killing the men as they lay in their blankets and committing horrible atrocities upon the dead bodies and had dead fallen upon the horses and cattle killing and maiming the poor beasts in mere lust of cruelty. He was sure they were following him he had heard their yells several times during his desperate race and each time he had redoubled his speed his shoes were gone his stocking hung and shreds from his ankles and his feet were a mass of raw and bleeding flesh pierced by hundreds of cactus thorns. He had hurried away on an eastern bound freight train to Deming, the next station to rouse the citizens and help to raise a malicious company whose coming was expected in a few hours in telegrams and it's set to Fort Bayard giving news of the outbreak and asking for a troop of cavalry. Every soul in Seapar, men, women and children, with all the arms and ammunition in the town had halded in the station house that they'd be able to make a successful resistance and as one man said make as many good engines as the Lord would let them for in those days the hearts would give us in the south west new terror and with good reason when the Apache went on the warpan the train sped on into the radiant white night but the car steps and platforms were deserted the passengers all sought their births as soon as possible there to lie below the level of the windows and pile all the pillows they can get between themselves and the side of the car when we reached Deming we found the place in an uproar every bell in town from the gong to the church bell was ringing its loudest and wildest men in varying degrees of undress were running up and down the streets calling loudly upon all citizens to come out at once the people were assembling at the depot where two or three of the cooler headed had taken the place of leaders and had begun to organize the excited mass into an armed and office company and get it ready to go quickly to the assistance of beleaguered little Seapar then our train sped on again through the wondrous night and I knew no more about the Indian War at Seapar until I sat on the kitchen doorstep at a patchy tail one evening some years later and beguiled Texas Bill into telling me yarns of his long and checkered experiences at Cowboy the cool soft breath of evening filled the air the alfalfa field glowed in its most vivid emerald in the yellow rays of the setting sun the same rich light the gray barren hillside beyond shown like beaten gold and Texas Bill just in from a week's trip on the range sooth and inspired by the civilizing influences of the ranch house a shave, clean clothes and a supper unbent from his usual bashful dignity and talk Texas Bill was tall and big and loose jointed and he spoke always in a long soft and different draw two articles of belief which no man might dispute without getting sight of the knife in his bootleg or the revolver on his hip one was that Texas was the biggest and best state in the union and the other that the cow business was no longer fit for a gentleman to follow he lounged on a bench beside the door and told me tales of the range and the roundup of herds of cattle stampeded by the smell of water of long rides and blinding sandstorms of the taking in of the tender of centipedes and side of Indian fights and narrow escapes were you ever in one of these Indian attacks yourself I asked for his Indian yarns had been about other men Texas Bill solemnly considered the heel of his Buddha moment and then just as solemnly replied yes, I was killed by the Apaches once he turned a serious face off towards Cook Peak which towered a mighty sculptured mass of pure sapphire blue against a turquoise sky an eye seeing that his countenance bore just such an expression of inscrutable solemnity as it might have done had he been acting as chief mortar of his own funeral answered just as soberly that must have been very interesting I wish you'd tell me about it his gaze returned to his feet his face relaxed into a smile a chuckle began somewhere in his throat wandered down his long frame and lost itself in his boots which were high healed and two sizes too small for him then he spoke again that was the time we run a blaze on Pard Huff then he relapsed into silence contemplation of his boots and several successive and long drawn chuckles but at last he began a story you see Pard Huff he wasn't afraid of a tall you couldn't convince him that coyotes ain't dangerous and he thought it was sure death if a tarantula looked at him you could make him jump out of his boots any time by just buzzing your tongue behind his ear I reckon he'd have sure died afraid if he had ever seen a live rattleslay spitting its tongue at him and engines? well he watched for apaches all day long during sight more late nights for being afraid they'd catch him he didn't seem to think of anything but apaches and he hadn't been us very long when the boys didn't give him a chance to think of anything else at all we was making a round up down below Seapart then and there was ten of us in the chuck wagon we made camp at night well one night Pard Huff he was a scarder than ever the boys struck his gate right off and kept him running he wanted to blaze him quite so bad or I'd have done my best to stop the thing well and they wouldn't either if he hadn't been the meanest sort of car that ever laid awake nights he asked each of us separate and then all of us in a bunch of supper if there was any danger of apaches down there and we all told him there was lots of it one of the boys said he'd seen signs over towards Hatchet Mountain that very day that sure meant apaches and another said he'd heard that a little ranch about 40 mile away had lately been cleaned out by them and everybody killed then we all talked about it and agreed they might come on us at any minute that most likely they'd attack us that very night and that we ought to get ready for them well sir that Pard Huff he never said another word he just sat there with his eyes getting bigger and his face whiter every minute we kept it up told stories about the way them devils do everything we'd ever heard of how they hold you and pull your tongue out or cut off your ears or run a steak through you and pin you to the ground or smash your face to jelly with a rock or burn you alive till Pard Huff didn't know which end he was standing on at all we got out our blankets and turned in but just kept talking about the apaches till that Pard Huff he was shaking as if he had a fit one of the boys said he'd bet Pard Huff would get his ears cut off the first rattle because they were so big the engines couldn't see nothing else at all in the camp till it got them out of the way and then bang bang bang when some sick shooters the boys yelled engines of apaches as loud as they could and the feller on the other side of Pard Huff Pard was laying next to me yelled out boys I'm killed says he and he rolled over on his face and kicked and yelled and groan then bang bang bang went the six shooters again and then he ought to see that Pard Huff well sir he was sure buffaloed he jumped out of his blankets let out one yell the chuck wagon was right behind us and he gave one jump and went clean over it lit out across the country like an antelope you all just thought of seeing that tenor foot pull his freight the boys come up a laughing and watched him run bet and he wouldn't stop till he got to Apache Tayhu but I said it wasn't right to buffalo him that bad so we all yelled and called him to come back but he only ran the faster the darn fool tenor foot thought it was the apaches Jason we all thought he'd soon find out there was nothing wrong at all and come back and so he went to bed again but he didn't the next day I had to come to Apache Tayhu and I found Pard Huff's bloody tracks most all the way to Seapar he'd run right over stones and cactus and prairie dog holes and everything else in his way and them fool people at Seapar was all huddled up in the depot and a company of men with Winchester and six shooters was there from Deming and everybody was watching the country all around with spy glasses for engines well so that darn fool tenor foot that Pard Huff had told them a fool yarn about Apache some prize in our camp killing everybody but him and they were sure Buffalo yes I said I know they were you how did you know anything about it oh I was there that night I passed through on the train and Seapar and Deming were the worst scared tons I ever saw Texas Bill Chuckle pleased that this verification of a story and went on then you know what I'm telling you sure true I thought maybe you all might and believe it at all for sure don't look reasonable that folks could vote over a darn fool tenor Fitz yarn they looked at me with mighty big eyes when I wrote in the Seapar says they had it you get out alive we sure thought you was dead well says I as far as I know I'm sure alive and I don't know as I've been into anything to get out of a doll why says that Pard Huff oh says I damn Pard Huff he's a tenor for them afraid of his shatter he dreamed about Apaches and jumped up and yelled and lit out for God's sakes we tried to call him back and he thought it was the Apaches after I reckon he scared you all half to death with this yarn you're as bad as tenor feet yourselves but they got the notion scared of them so bad they couldn't believe anything else and they sure thought they must be engines around somewhere and so I left them and rode on for Apache tail pretty soon I met a troop of cavalry from Fort Bayard on the track for Seapar the captain rode up to me and says have you been near the scene of the Indian depredations? no sir says I I hate seeing no Indian depredations nor engines neither this summer Huff says he that's queer yes sir says I I think likely I heard there's been some trouble with them last night down below Seapar but if there's been any engine depredations I hate seeing them at all and then I rode on for I hadn't time to be bothered with no more of his questions and to I reckon likely him and his shoulders needed some exercise and they got it too they just kept on the trot for the Mexican line and kept it going for three months they started out for engines and engines they was bound to have they just wound around through all that country south of Seapar and over in old Mexico and back again up into the mountains and across the plains they hadn't even seen the Apache a whole three months and they didn't find out it was all nothing but a blaze on part Huff till they got come back and I reckon about that time they concluded there ain't no bigger full on earth than a tenor foot at all and there ain't neither well I tell you that part Huff was sure mad when we found out we had all been running a blaze on him I don't know as I blame him much for that ten mile run of his to Seapar and his rock sock feet over cactus and stones wasn't much of a joke at all but he wasn't all fired a full tenor foot then we suppose or we wouldn't have done it end of a blaze on part Huff by Florence Finch Kelly The California's Tale by Mark Twain Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn and washing a hat full of dirt here and there always expecting to make a rich strike and never doing it it was a lovely region woodsy, balmy, delicious and had once been popular and had once been popular and had once been popular and had once been popular and had once been popular long years before but now the people had vanished and the charming paradise was a solitude they went away when the surface diggings gave out in one place where a busy little city with banks and newspapers and fire companies and a mayor and alderman had been was nothing but a wide expanse of emerald turf with not even the faintest sign that human life had ever been present there this was down toward Tuttle Town in the country neighborhood thereabouts along the dusty roads one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes snug and cozy and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight sign that these were deserted homes forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away now and then half an hour apart one came across solitary log cabins of the earliest mining days built by the first gold miners the predecessors of the cottage builders in some few cases these cabins were still occupied and when this was so you could depend upon it that the occupant was the very pioneer who had built the cabin and you could depend on another thing too that he was there because he had once had his opportunity to go home to the states rich and had not done it had rather lost his wealth and had then in his humiliation resolved to sever all communication with his home relatives and friends and be to them thenceforth as one dead round about California in that day were scattered a host of these living dead men pride smitten poor fellows grizzled and old at forty whose secret thoughts were made all of regrets and longings regrets were their wasted lives they would be out of the struggle and done with it all it was a lonesome land not a sound in all those peaceful expanses of grass and woods but the drowsy hum of insects no glimpse of man or beast nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad to be alive and so at last in the early part of the afternoon when I caught sight of a human creature I felt a most grateful uplift this person was a man about standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose clad cottages of the sort already referred to however this one hadn't a deserted look it had the look of being lived in and petted and cared for and looked after and so had its front yard which was a garden of flowers abundant gay and flourishing I was invited in of course and required to make myself at home it was the custom of the country it was delightful to be in such a place after long weeks of daily and nightly familiarity with miners' cabins with all which this implies of dirt floor never made beds tin plates and cups bacon and beans and black coffee and nothing of ornament but war pictures from the eastern illustrated papers tacked to the log walls that was all hard cheerless materialistic desolation but here was a nest which had aspects to rest its tired eye and refresh that something in one's nature which after long fasting recognizes when confronted by the belongings of art how so ever cheap and modest they may be that it has unconsciously been famishing and now has found nourishment I could not have believed that a rag carpet could feast me so and so content me or that there could be such solace to the soul in wallpaper and framed lithographs and bright colored tidies and lamp mats and Windsor chairs and varnished what-nots with seashells and books and china vases on them and the score of little unclassifiable tricks and touches that a woman's hand distributes about a home which one sees without knowing he sees them yet would miss in a moment if they were taken away the delight that was in my heart showed in my face and the man saw it and was pleased saw it so plainly that he then spoken all her work he said caressingly she did it all herself every bit and he took the room in with a glance which was full of affectionate worship one of those soft Japanese fabrics with which women drape with careful negligence the upper part of a picture frame was out of adjustment he noticed it and rearranged it with cautious pains stepping back several times to gauge the effect before he then he gave it a light finishing pat or two with his hand and said she always does that you can't tell just what it lacks but it does lack something until you've done that you can see it yourself after it's done but that is all you know you can't find out the law of it it's like the finishing pat some mother gives the child's hair after she's got it combed and brushed I reckon I've seen her fix all these things so much that I can do them all way though I don't know the law of any of them but she knows the law she knows the why and the howl both but I don't know the why I only know the howl he took me into a bedroom so that I might wash my hands such a bedroom as I had not seen for years white counter pain white pillows carpeted floor papered walls pictures dressing table with mirror and pin cushion and dainty toilet things and in the corner wash stand with real chinaware bowl and pitcher and with soap in a china dish and on a rack more than a dozen towels towels too clean and white for one out of practice to use without some vague sense of profanation so my face spoke again and he answered with gratified words all her work she did it all herself every bit nothing here that hasn't felt the touch of her hand now you would think but I mustn't talk so much by this time I was wiping my hands and glancing from detail to detail of the room's belongings as one is apt to do when he is in a new place where everything he sees is a comfort to the eye and his spirit and I became conscious in one of those unaccountable ways you know that there was something there somewhere that the man wanted me to discover for myself I knew it perfectly and I knew he was trying to help me by getting out of situations with his eye so I tried hard to get on the right track being eager to gratify him I failed several times as I could see out of the corner of my eye without being told but at last I knew I must be looking straight at the thing knew it from the pleasure issuing an invisible waves from him he broke into a happy laugh and rubbed his hands together and cried out that's it you found it I knew you would it's her picture black walnut bracket on the farther wall and did find there what I had not yet noticed a daguerre type case it contained the sweetest girlish face and the most beautiful as it seemed to me that I had ever seen the man drank the admiration from my face and was fully satisfied nineteen her last birthday he said as he put the picture back and that was the day we were married when you see her just wait till you see her where is she when will she be in oh she's away now she's gone to see her people they live forty or fifty miles from here she's been gone two weeks today when do you expect her back this is Wednesday she'll be back Saturday in the evening about nine o'clock likely I felt a sharp sense of disappointment I'm sorry because I'll be gone then I said regretfully gone oh why should you go don't go she'll be disappointed she would be disappointed that beautiful creature if she had said the words herself they could hardly have blessed me more I was feeling a deep strong longing to see her a longing so supplicating so insistent that it made me afraid I said to myself I will go straight away from this place for my peace of mind's sake you see she likes to have people come and stop with us people who know things and can talk people like you she delights in it for she knows oh she knows nearly everything herself and can talk oh like a bird and the books she reads why you would be astonished don't go it's only a little while you know and she'll be so disappointed I heard the words but hardly noticed them I was so deep in my thinking and struggling he left me but I didn't know presently he was back with the picture case in his hand and he held it open before me and said there now tell her to her face you could have stayed to see her and you wouldn't that second glimpse broke down my good resolution I would stay and take the risk that night we smoked the tranquil pipe and talked till late about various things but mainly about her and certainly I had no such pleasant and restful time for many a day the Thursday followed and slipped comfortably away toward the twilight a big minor from three miles away came one of the grizzled stranded pioneers and gave us warm salutation clothed in grave and sober speech then he said I only just dropped over to ask about the little madam and when she's coming home any news from her oh yes a letter would you like to hear it Tom well I should think I would if you don't mind Henry Henry got the letter out of his wallet and said he would skip some of the private phrases if we were willing then he went on and read the bulk of it a loving sedate and altogether charming and gracious piece of hand he worked with a post script full of affectionate regards and messages to Tom and Joe and Charlie and other close friends and neighbors as the reader finished he glanced at Tom and cried out oh oh you're at it again take your hands away and let me see your eyes you always do that when I read a letter from her I will write and tell her oh no you mustn't Henry I'm getting old you know and any little disappointment makes me want to cry I I thought she'd be here herself and now you've got only a letter well now what put that in your head I thought everybody knew she wasn't coming till Saturday Saturday why come to think I did know it I wonder what's the matter with me lately certainly I knew it ain't we all getting ready for her well I must be going but I'll be on hand when she comes old man late Friday afternoon another gray veteran tramped over from his cabin a mile or so away and said the boys wanted to have a little gady and a good time Saturday night if Henry thought she wouldn't be too tired after her journey to be kept up tired she tired oh here the man Joe you know she'd sit up six weeks to please any one of you when Joe heard that there was a letter he asked to have it read and the loving messages in it for him broke the old fellow all up but he said he was such an old wreck that that would happen to him if she only just mentioned his name Lord we miss her so he said Saturday afternoon I found I was taking out my watch pretty often Henry noticed it and said with a startled look you don't think she ought to be here soon do you I felt caught and a little embarrassed but I laughed and said it was a habit of mine when I was in a state of expectancy but he didn't seem quite satisfied and from that time on he began to show uneasiness four times he walked me up the road to a point whence we could see a long distance and there he would stand shading his eyes with his hand and looking several times he said I'm getting worried I'm getting right down worried I know she's not due till about nine o'clock and yet something seems to be trying to warn me that something's happened you don't think anything has happened do you I began to get pretty thoroughly ashamed of him for his childishness and at last when he repeated that imploring question still another time I lost my patience for the moment and spoke pretty brutally to him it seemed to shrivel him up and he looked so wounded and so humble after that that I detested myself for having done the cruel and unnecessary thing and so I was glad when Charlie another veteran arrived toward the edge of the evening and nestled up to Henry to hear the letter read and talked over the preparations for the welcome Charlie fetched out one hearty speech after another and did his best to drive away his friends boating and apprehensions anything happened to her Henry that's pure nonsense there isn't anything going to happen to her just make your mind easy as to that what did the letter say said she was well didn't it and said she'd be here by nine o'clock didn't it did you ever know her to fail of her word why you know you never did well then don't you fret she'll be here and that's absolutely certain and as sure as you're born come now let's get to decorating not much time left pretty soon Tom and Joe arrived and then all hands set about adoring the house with flowers toward nine the three minors said that as they had brought their instruments they might as well tune up for the boys and girls would be arriving now and hungry for a good old fashioned breakdown a fiddle a banjo and a clarinet were the instruments the trio took their places side by side and began to play some rattling dance music and beat time with their big boots it was getting very close to nine Henry was standing in the door with his eyes directed up the road his body swaying to the torture of his mental distress he had been made to drink to his wife's health and safety several times and now Tom shouted all hands stand by one more drink and she's here Joe brought the glasses on a waiter and served the party I reached for one of the two remaining glasses but Joe growled under his breath dropped it take the other which I did Henry was served last he had hardly swallowed his drink when the clock began to strike he listened till it finished his face growing pale and paler then he said boys I'm sick with fear help me I want to lie down they helped him to the sofa he began to nestle and drowls but presently spoke up like one talking in his sleep and said did I hear horses feet have they come one of the veterans answered close to his ear it was Jimmy Parish come to say the party got delayed but they're right up the road of peace and coming along her horse is lame but she'll be here in half an hour I'm so thankful nothing has happened he was asleep almost before the words were out of his mouth in a moment those handymen had his clothes off and had tucked him into his bed in the chamber where I had washed my hands closed the door and came back then they seemed preparing to leave but I said please don't go gentlemen she won't know me I am a stranger they glanced at each other then Joe said she poor thing she's been dead 19 years dead that or worse she went to see her folks half a year after she was married and on her way back on a Saturday evening the Indians captured her within five miles of this place she's never been heard of since and he lost his mind in consequence never has been sane an hour since but he only gets bad when that time of year comes around then we begin to drop in here three days before she's due to encourage him up and ask if he's heard from her and Saturday we all come and fix up the house with flowers and get everything ready for a dance we've done it every year for 19 years the first Saturday there was 27 of us without counting the girls there's only three of us now and the girls are all gone we drug him to sleep or he would go wild then he's all right for another year thinks she's with him till the last three or four days come around then he begins to look for her and gets out his poor old letter and we come and ask him to read it to us Lord she was darling end of the Californians tale by Mark Twain love Achilles this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Ben Laffen from The Clicking of Cuthbert by PG Woodhouse on the young man's face as he set sipping ginger ale in the clubhouse smoking room there was a look of disillusionment never again he said the oldest member glanced up from his paper you're proposing to give up golf once more he queried not golf betting on golf young man frowned I've just been let down badly wouldn't you have thought I had a good thing laying seven to one on McTavish against Robinson undoubtedly said the sage the odds indeed generous as they are scarcely indicate the form of superiority do you mean to tell me that the thing came and stitched Robinson wanted a walk after being three down at the turn strange what happened why they looked in at the bar to have a refresher before starting for the tenth said the young man his voice quivering and McTavish suddenly discovered that there was a hole in his trousers pocket and six pins had dropped out he worried so frightfully about it that on the second nine he couldn't do a thing right went completely off his game and didn't win a hole the sage shook his head gravely if this is really going to be a lesson to you my boy never bet on the result of a golf match it will be a blessing in disguise there's no such thing as certainty in golf I wonder if I ever told you a rather curious episode in the career of Vincent Jop the Vincent Jop the American multi-millionaire the same you never knew he once came within an ace of winning the American amateur championship did you I never heard of him playing golf he played for one season after that he gave it up and has not touched a club since ring the bell and get me a small lime juice and I will tell you all it was long before your time said the oldest member that the events which I am about to relate took place I had just come down from Cambridge and was feeling particularly pleased with myself because I had secured the job of private and confidential secretary to Vincent Jop then a man in his early thirties busy laying the foundations of his present remarkable fortune he engaged me and took me with him to Chicago Jop was I think the most extraordinary personality I have encountered in a long and many-sighted life he was admirably equipped for success in finance having the steely eye and square jaw without which it is hopeless for a man to enter that line of business he possessed also an overwhelming confidence in himself and the ability to switch a cigar from one corner of his mouth to the other without wiggling his ears which as you know is the stamp of a true monarch of the money market he was the nearest approach to the financer on the films the fellow who makes his jaw muscles jump when he is telephoning that I have ever seen like all successful men he was a man of method he kept a pad on his desk on which he would scribble down his appointments and it was my duty on entering the office each morning to take this pad and type its contents neatly in a loose leafed ledger usually of course these entries referred to business appointments and deals which he was contemplating but one day I was interested to note against the date May 3rd the entry proposed to Amelia I was interested as I say but not surprised though a man of steel and iron there was nothing of the celebrate about Vincent Job he was one of those men who married early and often on three separate occasions before I joined his service he had jumped off the dock to scramble back to shore again later by means of the divorce court life belt scattered here and there about the country there were three ex-mrs. Jobs drawing their monthly envelope and now it seemed he complicated the addition of a fourth to the platoon I was not surprised I say this resolve of his what did seem a little remarkable to me was a thorough way in which he had thought the thing out this iron-willed man wrecked nothing of possible obstacles under the date of June 1st was the entry Mary Amelia while in March of the following year he had arranged to have his first born christened Thomas Reginald later on the short coding of Thomas Reginald was arranged for and there was a note about sending him to school many hard things have been said about Vincent Job but nobody has ever accused him of not being a man who looked ahead on the morning of May 4th Job came into the office looking I fancied a little thoughtful he sat for some moment staring before him with his brow trifle furrowed then he seemed to come to himself he wrapped his desk he said it was as he habitually addressed me Mr. Job I replied what's golf I had at that time just succeeded in getting my handicap down into single figures and I welcomed the opportunity of dilating on the noblest of pastimes but I barely begun my eulogy when he stopped me it's a game isn't it I suppose you could call it that I said but it is an offhand way of describing the holiest how do you play it pretty well I said at the beginning of the season I didn't seem able to keep him straight at all but lately I've been doing fine getting better every day whether it was I was moving my head or gripping too tightly with the right hand keep the reminisces for your children during long winter evenings he interrupted abruptly as was his habit what I want to know is what a fellow does when he plays golf tell me in as few words as you can just what it's all about you hit a ball with a stick till it falls into a hole easy you snap take dictation I produced my pad May the 5th take up golf what's an amateur championship it's the annual competition to decide which is the best player among amateurs there is also a professional championship and an open event all their golf professionals are there what do they do they teach golf which is the best of them Sandy McHOOTS won both British and American open events last year why not him to come here at once but McHOOTS is at Inverlochte in Scotland never mind get him tell him to name his own terms when is the amateur championship I think it's on September the 12th this year alright take dictation September 12th win amateur championship I stared at him in amazement but he was not looking at me got that he said September 3 oh I was forgetting at September 12 corner week September 13 Mary Amelia Mary Amelia I echoed moistening my pencil where do you play this what's it's name golf there are clubs all over the country I belong to the Wissa Hickey Glen is that a good place very good arrange today for my becoming a member Sandy McHOOTS arrived in due course and was shown into the private office Mr. McHOOTS said Vincent Jop said the open champion I've sent for you Mr. McHOOTS because I hear that you are the greatest living exponent of this game golf I said the champion cordially I am that I wish you to teach me the game I'm already somewhat behind schedule owing to the delay incident upon your long journey so let us start at once name a few of the most important points in the section with the game my secretary will make notes of them and I will memorize them and that's where we shall save time now what is the most important thing to remember when playing golf keep your head still simple task not as simple as it seems nonsense said Vincent Jop curtly if I decide to keep my head still I shall keep it still what next do not press I won't and to resume Mr. McHOOTS ran through a dozen of the basic rules and I took them down in shorthand Vincent Jop studied the list very good easier than I had supposed on the first tee it was at Hickey Glen at 11 sharp tomorrow Mr. McHOOTS hurry you sir I said go out and buy me a set of clubs a cloth cap a pair of spike shoes and a ball one ball certainly more it sometimes happens I explain that a player who is learning the game fails to hit his ball straight and then he often loses it in the rough side of the fairway absurd said Vincent Jop if I set out to drive my ball straight I shall drive it straight good morning Mr. McHOOTS you'll excuse me now I am busy concerning woven textiles golf is in its essence a simple game you laugh in a sharp bitter barking manner when I say this but nevertheless it is true the average man goes wrong in making the game difficult for himself observe the non-player the man who walks around with you for the sake of fresh air he will haul out a single carefree flick of his umbrella the 20 foot putt over which you would ponder and hesitate for a full minute before sending it right off the line put a driver in his hands and he takes the ball into the next country without a thought it is only when he takes to the game an earnest that he becomes self-conscious and anxious and tops his shots even as you and I a man who could retain through his golfing career the almost scornful confidence of a non-player would be unbeatable fortunately such an attitude of mind is beyond the scope of human nature it was not however be on the scope of Vincent Job the Superman Vincent Job was I am inclined to think the only golfer who ever approached the game in a spirit of pure reason I have read of men who never having swum in their lives studied a text book on their way down to the swimming bath mastered its contents and dived in and won the big race in just such a spirit did Vincent Job start to play golf he committed mckhoots hints to memory and then went out on the links and put them into practice he came to the tee with a clear picture in his mind of what he had to do and he did it he was not intimidated like the average novice by the thought that if he pulled in his hands he would slice or if he gripped too tightly with the right he would pull pulling in his hands was an error so he did not pull in his hands gripping too tightly was a defect so he did not grip too tightly with that weird concentration that served him so well in business he did precisely what he had set out to do no less and no more golf with Vincent Job was an exact science the annals of the game were studied with the names of those who have made rapid progress in their first season Colonel Quill we read in our garden took up golf at the age of 56 and by devising an ingenious machine consisting of a fishing line and a sawed-down bed post was enabled to keep his head so still that he became a scratch player before the end of the year but no one I imagine except Vincent Job has ever achieved scratch on his first morning out on the links the main difference we are told between the amateur and the professional golfer is the fact that the latter is always aiming at the pin while the former has in his mind a vague picture of getting somewhat reasonably near it Vincent Job invariably went for the pin he tried to hole out from anywhere inside 220 yards the only occasion on which I ever heard him express any chagrin or disappointment was during the afternoon round on his first day out when from the tee on the 280 yard 7 he laid his ball within six inches of the hole a marvelous shot I cried genuinely stirred too much to the right said Vincent Job frowning he went on from triumph to triumph he won the monthly medal in May, June, July, August and September toward the end of May he was heard to complain that the whistle-hickey glint was not a sporting course Green's committee set up night after night trying to adjust his handicap so as to give the other members an outside chance against him the golf experts of the Daily Papers wrote columns about his play and it was pretty generally considered throughout the country that it would be a pure formality for anyone else to enter against him in the amateur championship an opinion which was borne out when he got through the file without losing a hole a safe man to have betted on you would have said but mark the sequel the American amateur championship was held that year in Detroit I had accompanied my employer there for though engaged on this nerve-wearing contest he refused to allow his business to be interfered with as he had indicated on his schedule he was busy at the time cornering wheat and it was my task to combine the duties of caddy and secretary each day I accompanied him around the links with my notebook and his bag of clubs and the progress of his various matches was somewhat complicated by the arrival of a stream of telegraph boys bearing important messages he would read these between strokes and dictate replies to me never, however taking more than five minutes allowed by the rules for an interval between strokes I'm inclined to think that it was this that put the finishing touch on his opponent's discomforture it is not soothing for a nervous man to have the game hung up on the green while his adversary dictates to his caddy a letter beginning years of the 11th instantly received and contents noted in reply would state this sort of thing puts a man off his game I was resting in the lobby of our hotel after a strenuous day's work when I found that I was being paged I answered the summons and was informed that a lady wished to see me her card bore the name Ms. Amelia Meridu Amelia that name seemed familiar I remembered Amelia was the name of the girl Vincent Jop intended to marry the fourth of the long line of Mrs. Jop's I hurried to present myself and found a tall, slim girl who was plainly laboring under a considerable agitation Ms. Meridu I said yes she murmured my name may be strange to you am I right I hurried and supposing that you're the lady to whom Mr. Jop I am I am she replied and oh what shall I do kindly give me the particulars I said taking out a pad from force of habit she hesitated a moment as if afraid to speak you're a cadding for Mr. Jop in the final tomorrow she said at last I am then could you would you mind would it be giving you too much trouble if I asked you to shout boo at him while he was making a stroke if he looks like winning I was perplexed I don't understand I see that I must tell you all I'm sure you'll treat what I say as absolutely confidential certainly I'm provisionally engaged to Mr. Jop provisionally she gulped let me tell you my story Mr. Jop asked me to marry him and I would rather do anything on earth than marry him but how could I say no with those awful eyes boring me through I knew that if I said no he would argue me out of it in two minutes I had an idea I gather that he had never played golf so I told him that I would marry him if he won the amateur championship this year and now I find that he has been a golfer all along and what is more a plus man it isn't fair he was not a golfer when you made that condition I said he took up the game on the following day impossible how could he have become as good as he is in this short time because he is Vincent Jop in his lexicon there is no such word as impossible she shuddered what a man but I can't marry him she cried I want to marry somebody else won't you help me do shout boo at him when he is starting his downswing I shook my head it would take more than a single boo to put Vincent Jop off his stroke but won't you try it I cannot my duty is to my employer oh do no no duty is duty and paramount with me besides I made a bet on him to win the stricken girl uttered a faint moan and tottered away I was in our suite shortly after dinner that night going over some of the notes I had made that day when the telephone rang Jop was out at the time taking a short stroll with his after dinner cigar I unhooked the receiver and a female voice spoke is that Mr. Jop? Mr. Jop secretary speaking Mr. Jop is out oh it's nothing important will you say that Mrs. Luella main price Jop called up to wish him luck I shall be on the course tomorrow to see him win the final I returned to my notes soon afterwards the telephone rang again Vincent dear Mr. Jop secretary speaking oh will you say that Mrs. Jane Duke's Jop called up to wish him luck I shall be there tomorrow to see him play I resume my work I had hardly started when the telephone rang for the third time Mr. Jop Mr. Jop secretary speaking this is Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jop I just called up to wish him luck I shall be looking on tomorrow I shifted my work near to the telephone table so as to be ready for the next call I had heard that Vincent Jop had only been married three times but you never knew presently Jop came in anybody call up he asked nobody on business an assortment of your wives were on the wire wishing you luck they asked me to say that they will be on the course tomorrow for a moment it seemed that the man's iron repose was shaken Luella he asked she was the first Jane and Jane and Agnes Agnes I said is right hmm said Vincent Jop and for the first time since I had known him I thought he was ill at ease the day of the final dawn bright and clear at least I was not awake at the time to see but I supposed it did for at 9 o'clock when I came down to breakfast the sun was shining brightly the first 18 holes were to be played before lunch starting at 11 until 20 minutes before the hour Vincent Jop kept me busy taking dictation partly on matters connected with his wheat deal and partly on a signed article dealing with the final entitled how I won at 11 sharp we were out on the first tee Jop's opponent was a nice-looking man but obviously nervous he giggled in a distraught sort of way as he shook hands with my employer well may the best man win he said I have arranged to do so replied Jop curtly and started to address his ball there was a large crowd at the tee and as Jop started his downswing from somewhere on the outskirts of this crowd there came a sudden musical boo it rang out in the clear morning air like a bugle I'd been right in my estimate of Vincent Jop his forceful stroke never wavered the head of his club struck the ball dispatching it a good 200 yards down the middle of the fairway as we left the tee I saw Melia Meridu being led away with bowed head by two members of the greens committee poor girl my heart bled for her and yet after all they had been kind and removing her from the scene even in custody for she could hardly have born to watch the proceedings Vincent Jop may rings around his antagonist whole after whole he won in his remorseless machine like way until when lunchtime came at the end of the 18th he was 10 up all the other holds had been halved it was after lunch as we made our way to the first tee that the advance guard of the Mrs. Jops appeared in the person of Llewelyn main price Jop a kittenish little woman with blonde hair and a pick and ease dog I remember reading in the papers that she had divorced my employer for persistent and aggravated mental cruelty calling witnesses to bear out her statement that he had said he did not like her in pink and that on two separate occasions he had insisted on her dog eating the leg of the chicken instead of the breast but time the great healer seemed to have removed all bitterness and she greeted him affectionately while some's going to win the great big championship against the rough strong man she said such said Vincent Jop is my intention it was kind of you Llewell to trouble to come and watch me I wonder if you know Miss Agnes Parsons Jop he said courteously indicating a kind looking motherly woman who had just come up how are you Agnes if you had asked me that question this morning Vincent replied Miss Agnes Parsons Jop I would have been obliged to say that I felt far from well I had an odd throbbing feeling in the left elbow and I'm sure my temperature was up above normal but this afternoon I'm feeling a little better how are you Vincent although she had as I recall from the reports of the case been compelled some years earlier to request the court to sever her marital relationships with Vincent Jop on the ground of calculated and inhuman brutality in that he had callously refused in spite of her pleadings to take old Dr. Bennett's tonic swamp juice three times a day her voice that she spoke was kind and even anxious badly as this man had treated her and I remember hearing that several of the jury had been unable to restrain their tears when she was in the witness box giving her evidence there still seemed to linger some remnants of the old affection I'm quite well thank you Agnes said Vincent Jop are you wearing your liver pad a frown flitted across my employer strong face I am not he replied briskly oh Vincent how rash of you he was about to speak when a sudden exclamation from his rear checked him a genial looking woman in a sports coat was standing there eyeing him in a sort of humorous horror well Jane he said I gathered that this was Mrs. Jane Jukes Jop the wife who had divorced him for systematic and ingrowing fiendishness on the ground that he had repeatedly outraced her feelings by wearing a white waistcoat with a dinner jacket she continued to look at him dumbly and uttered a sort of strangled hysterical laugh those legs she cried those legs Vincent Jop flushed darkly even the strongest and most silent of us have our weaknesses and my employers was the rooted idea that he looked well in his knickerbockers it was not my place to try to dissuade him but there was no doubt that they did not suit him nature and bestowing upon him a massive head and jetting chin had forgotten to finish him off dear man when Tom misses Jane Duke's Jop what practical joker ever lured you into appearing in public in Knickerbockers I don't object to Knickerbockers said Mrs. Agnes Parsons Jop but when he foolishly comes out and quite a strong east wind without his liver pad little tinky ting don't need a liver pot he don't said Mrs. Luella main price Jop and at this moment I saw a bead of perspiration spring out on his forehead and into his steely eyes there came a positively hunted look I can understand and sympathize Napoleon himself would have will to defeat found himself in the midst of a trio of females one talking baby talk another fussing about his health and the third making derogatory observations on his lower limbs Vincent Jop was becoming unstrung the look of the man his back is against the wall tin down on the morning's round and he had drawn his reserves of courage and was determined to meet the inevitable bravely Vincent Jop nodded absently then turned to me keep those women away from me whispered tersely they'll put me off my stroke put you off your stroke I exclaimed incredulously yes me how the deuce can I concentrate with these people battling about liver pads and knickerbuckers all around me his ball and there was a weak uncertainty in the way he did it that prepared me for what was to come his club rose wavered fell and the ball badly toppled trickled two feet and sank into a cuppy lie is that good or bad inquired miss louis main price jop a sort of desperate hope gleamed in the eye of the other competitor in the final he swung with renewed vigor his ball struck a stone and bound it away into the long grass to the side of the green his opponent won the hall we moved on to the second tee no bit young man said jane juke's job indicating her late husband's blushing antagonist is quite right to wear knickerbuckers he can carry them off but a glance in the mirror must have shown me his job solicitously you are quite fleshed there's a wild gleam in your eyes muzzle's pet's got little buttons of eyes that don't never have no wild gleam in them because he's measure's own darling he is said miss louis main price jop a hollow groan escape Vincent jop's it was pitiful to watch Vincent jop in his downfall by the end of the first nine his lead had been reduced to one and his antagonist rendered a new man by success was playing magnificent golf on the next hall he drew level then with super human effort jop contrived to have the 11th 12th and 13th it seemed as he turned to within a few feet of the green and then as Vincent jop was shaping for his stroke well a main price gave tone Vincent wow Vincent that's other man bad man not playing fair when your back was turned just now he gave his bowl a great eye was watching him at any rate said afternoon I saw about it in one of the papers the advertisement speak most highly of it you take it before breakfast and again before retiring and they guarantee it to produce firm healthy flesh that will most sparsely cover the limbs in the next no time now will you remember to get to bottle tonight it comes in two sizes the five shilling or a large size and a smaller half a crown Vincent jop uttered a quavering moan and his hand as he took to the clubhouse a beaten man and so concluded the oldest member you see that in golf there is no such thing as a soft snap you can never be certain of the finest player anything may happen to the greatest expert at any stage of the game in a recent competition George Duncan took 11 shots over a hole which 18 handicap men generally do in five no back horses or go down to the Throgmorton street and try to take it away from the Rothschilds and I will applaud you as a shrewd and cautious financer with his pure gambling end of chapter Thou art the man by Edgar Allen Poe read by Abraham Romney this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org I will now play the Oedipus to the Rattleboro enigma I will expound to you as I alone can the secret of the Injury that affected the Rattleboro miracle the one the true the admitted the undisputed the indisputable miracle which put a definite end to infidelity among the Rattleburgers and converted to the orthodoxy of the Grand Ames all the carnal minded who had ventured to be skeptical before this event which I should be very sorry to discuss in a tone of unsuitable levity occurred in the summer of 18 Dash Mr. Barnabas shuttle worthy one of the wealthiest and most respectable citizens of the borough had been missing for several days under circumstances which gave rise to suspicion of foul play Mr. shuttle worthy had set out from Rattleboro very early one Saturday morning on horseback with the avowed intention of proceeding to the city of Blink about 15 miles distant and of returning the night of the same day two hours after his departure however his horse returned without him and without the saddle bags which had been strapped on his back at starting the animal was wounded too and covered with mud these circumstances naturally gave rise to much alarm among the friends of the missing man and when it was found on Sunday morning that he had not yet made his appearance the whole borough arose in mass to go and look for his buddy the foremost and most energetic in instituting this search was the bosom friend of Mr. shuttle worthy a Mr. Charles Goodfellow or as he was inversely called Charlie Goodfellow or old Charlie Goodfellow now whether it is a marvelous coincidence or whether it is the name itself has an imperceptible effect upon the character I have never yet been able to ascertain but the fact is unquestionable that there never yet was any person named Charles who was not an open manly honest good natured and frank-hearted fellow with a rich clear voice that did you good to hear it and an eye that looked always straight in the face as much as to say I have a clear conscience of myself I'm afraid of no man and I'm altogether above doing mean action and thus all the hearty careless walking gentlemen of the stage are very certain to be called Charles now old Charlie Goodfellow although he had been in Rattleboro no longer than six months were thereabouts and although nobody knew anything about him before he came to settle in the neighborhood had experienced no difficulty in the world making the acquaintance of all the respectable people in the borough not a man of them but would have taken his bare word for a thousand at any moment and as for the women there is no saying what they would not have done to oblige him and all this came of his having been Christian Charles and of his possessing in consequence that ingenuous face which is proverbially the best letter of recommendation I've already said that Mr. Shuttleworthy was one of the most respectable and undoubtedly he was the most wealthy man in Rattleboro while old Charlie Goodfellow was upon as intimate terms with him as if he had been his own brother the two old gentlemen were next door neighbors and although Mr. Shuttleworthy seldom if ever visited old Charlie and never was known to take a meal in his house still this did not prevent the two friends from being exceeding the intimate as I have just observed for old Charlie never let a day pass without stepping in three or four times to see how his neighbor came on and very often he would stay to breakfast or tea and almost always to dinner and then the amount of wine that was made way with by the two cronies that are sitting it would really be a difficult thing to ascertain old Charlie's favorite beverage was Chateau Margot and it appeared to do Mr. Shuttleworthy's heart good to see the old fellow swallow it as he did quart after quart so that one day when the wine was in and the wit as a natural consequence somewhat out he said to his crony as he slapped him I tell you what it is old Charlie you are by all odds the heartiest old fellow I ever came across in all my born days and since you love to guzzle the wine at that fashion I'll be darned if I don't have to make the a present of a big box of the Chateau Margot odd rot me Mr. Shuttleworthy had a sad habit of swearing although he seldom went beyond odd rot me or by gosh or by the jolly golly and an order to the town this very afternoon for a double box of the best that can be got and I'll make you a present of it I will you needn't say a word now I will I tell you and there is an end of it so look out for it it will come to hand some of these fine days precisely when you are looking for it the least I mentioned this little bit of liberality on the part of Mr. Shuttleworthy just by way of the two friends while on the Sunday morning in question when it came to be a fairly understood that Mr. Shuttleworthy had met with foul play I never saw anyone so profoundly affected as old Charlie good fellow when he first heard that the horse had come home without his master and without his master's saddle bags and all bloody from a pistol shot that had still as if the missing man had been his own dear brother or father and shivered and shook all over as if he had had a fit of the egg you at first he was too much overpowered with grief to be able to do anything at all or to decide upon any plan of action so for a long time he endeavored to dissuade Mr. Shuttleworthy's other friends from making a stir about the matter thinking it best to wait a while say for a week or two or a month in a natural way and explain his reasons for sending his horse on before I dare say you have often observed this disposition to temporize or to procrastinate in people who are laboring under any very poignant sorrow their powers of mind seem to be rendered torpid so that they have a horror of anything like action and like nothing in the world so well as to lie quietly in bed and nurse their grief as the old ladies express it that is to say ruminate over their trouble the people of Rattleboro had indeed so high an opinion of the wisdom and discretion of old Charlie that the greater part of them felt disposed to agree with him and not make a stir in the business until something should turn up as the honest old gentleman worded it and I believe that after all this would have been the general determination but for the very suspicious interference of Mr. Shuttleworthy's nephew a young man of very dissipated habits whose name was Pennyfeather would listen to nothing like reason in the matter of lying quiet but insisted upon making immediate search for the corpse of the murdered man this was the expression he employed and Mr. Goodfellow acutely remarked at the time that it was a singular expression to say no more this remark of old Charlie's too had great effect upon the crowd and one of the party was heard to ask very impressively how it happened that young Mr. Pennyfeather with his wealth the uncle's disappearance as to feel authorized to assert distinctly and unequivocally that his uncle was a murdered man hereupon some little squibbling and bickering occurred among various members of the crowd and especially between old Charlie and Mr. Pennyfeather although this latter occurrence was indeed by no means a novelty for little Goodwill had subsisted between the two parties for the last three or four months and matters Pennyfeather had actually knocked down his uncle's friend for some alleged excess of liberty that the latter had taken in the uncle's house of which the nephew was an inmate upon this occasion old Charlie is said to have behaved with exemplary moderation and Christian charity he rose from the blow adjusted his clothes and made no attempt at retaliation at all merely muttering a few words about taking summary vengeance at the first convenient opportunity a natural inevitable abolition of anger which meant nothing however and beyond doubt was no sooner given vent to than forgotten however these matters may be which have no reference to the point now at issue it is quite certain that the people of Rattleboro principally through the persuasion of Mr. Pennyfeather came at length to the determination of dispersing over the adjacent country in search of the missing Mr. Pennyfeather after it had been fully resolved that a search should be made it was considered almost a matter of course that the seekers should disperse that is to say distribute themselves in parties for the more thorough examination of the region roundabout I forget however by what ingenious train of reasoning it was that old Charlie finally convinced the assembly that this was the most injudicious plan that could be pursued that a search should be instituted carefully and very thoroughly by the burgers and mass old Charlie himself leading the way as for the matter of that there could have been no better pioneer than old Charlie whom everybody knew to have the eye of a links but although he led them into all manner of out of the way holes and corners by routes that nobody had ever suspected of existing in the neighborhood and although the search was shuttle worthy could be discovered when I say no trace however I must not be understood to speak literally for trace to some extent there certainly was the poor gentleman had been tracked by his horses shoes which were peculiar to a spot about 3 miles to the east of the borough on the main road leading to the city here the track made off into a bypass through a piece of woodland the path coming out again into the main road and cutting off the signal of the regular distance following the shoe marks down this lane the party came at length to a pool of stagnant water half hidden by the brambles to the right of the lane and opposite this pool of all vestige of the track was lost sight of it appeared however that a struggle of some nature had here taken place and it seemed as if some large and heavy body much larger and heavier than a man had been drawn the water was carefully dragged twice but nothing was found and the party were upon the point of going away in despair of coming to any result when providence suggested to Mr. Goodfellow the expediency of draining the water off altogether this project was received with cheers and many high compliments of too old Charlie upon his sagacity and consideration for a corpse the drain was easily and speedily affected and no sooner was the bottom visible then right in the middle of the mud that remained was discovered a black silk velvet waistcoat which nearly everyone present immediately recognized as the property of Mr. Pennefeather this waistcoat was much torn and stained with blood the remaining susceptible general Phil very serious some my son responsible it against him, that he grew exceedingly pale, and when asked what he had to say for himself was utterly incapable of saying a word, hereupon the few friends his riotous mode of living had left him deserted him at once to a man, and were even more clamorous than his ancient and avowed enemies for his instantaneous arrest. But on the other hand the magnanimity of Mr. Goodfellow shone forth with only the more brilliant luster through contrast. He made a warm and intensely eloquent defense of Mr. Penafeather in which he alluded more than once to his own sincere forgiveness of that wild young gentleman, the heir of the worthy Mr. Shuttleworthy, for the insult which he, the young gentleman, had no doubt in the heat of passion thought proper to put upon him Mr. Goodfellow. He forgave him for it, he said, from the very bottom of his heart and for himself Mr. Goodfellow, so far from pushing the suspicious circumstances to extremity which he was sorry to say really had arisen against Mr. Penafeather, he, Mr. Goodfellow, would make every exertion in his power, would employ all the little eloquence in his possession to soften down as much as he could conscientiously do so, the worst features of this really exceedingly perplexing piece of business. Mr. Goodfellow went on for some half hour longer in this train, very much to the credit both of his head and of his heart, but your warmhearted people are seldom apposite in their observations, they run into all sorts of lenders, contretombs and malapropisms in the hot-headedness of their zeal to serve a friend, thus often with the kindest intentions in the world doing infinitely more to prejudice his cause than to advance it. So in the present instance it turned out with the eloquence of old Charlie, for although he labored earnestly in behalf of the suspected yet it so happened somehow or other that every syllable he uttered of which the direct but unwitting tendency was not to exalt the speaker in the good opinion of his audience, had the effect of deepening the suspicion already attached to the individual whose cause he pled and of arousing against him the fury of the mob. One of the most unaccountable errors committed by the orator was his allusion to the suspected as the heir of the worthy old gentleman, Mr. Shuttleworthy. The people had really never thought of this before, they had only remembered certain threats of disinheritance uttered a year or two previously by the uncle who had no living relative except the nephew, and they had therefore always looked upon this disinheritance as a matter that was settled so single-minded a race of beings were the rattle-burgers, but the remarks of old Charlie brought them at once to a consideration of this point and thus gave them to see the possibility of the threats having been nothing more than a threat. And straightway here upon arose the natural question of quibono, a question that tended even more than the waistcoat to fasten the terrible crime upon the young man, and here, lest I be misunderstood, permit me to digress for one moment merely to observe that the exceedingly brief and simple Latin phrase which I have employed is invariably mistranslated and misconceived quibono. In all the crack novels and elsewhere, in those of Mrs. Gore, for example, the author of Cecil, a lady who quotes all tongues from the Chaldean to Chickasaw, and is helped to her learning as needed upon a systematic plan by Mr. Beckford. In all the crack novels, I say, from those of Bulwer and Dickens to those of Ternopene and Ainsworth, the two little Latin words quibono are rendered to what purpose, or as if quobono to what good, their true meaning nevertheless is for whose advantage, quie to whom bono is it for a benefit. It is a purely legal phrase and applicable precisely in cases such as we have now under consideration where the probability of the doer of deed hinges upon the probability of the benefit accruing to this individual or to that from the deed's accomplishment. Now in the present instance, the question quibono pointedly implicated Mr. Pinnifeather. His uncle had threatened him after making a will in his favor with disinheritance, but the threat had not been actually kept. The original will, it appeared, had not been altered. Had it been altered, the only supposable motive for murder on the part of the suspected would have been the ordinary one of revenge, and even this would have been counteracted by the hope of reinstation into the good graces of the uncle. But the will being unaltered while the threat to alter remained suspended over the nephew's head, there appears at once the very strongest possible inducement for the atrocity, and so concluded very sagaciously the worthy citizens of the borough of Rattle. Mr. Pinnifeather was accordingly arrested upon the spot, and the crowd, after some further search, proceeded homeward having him in custody. On the route, however, another circumstance occurred tending to confirm the suspicion entertained. Mr. Goodfellow, whose zeal led him to be always a little in advance of the party, was seen suddenly to run forward a few paces stoop, and then apparently to pick up some small object from the grass. Having quickly examined it, he was observed, too, to make a sort of half-attempt at concealing it in his coat pocket, but this action was noticed, as I say, and consequently prevented when the object picked up was found to be a Spanish knife, which a dozen persons at once recognized as belonging to Mr. Pinnifeather. Moreover, his initials were engraved upon the handle. The blade of this knife was open and bloody. No doubt now remained the guilt of the nephew, and immediately upon reaching Rattleboro, he was taken before a magistrate for examination. Here matters again took a most unfavorable turn. The prisoner being questioned as to his whereabouts on the morning of Mr. Shuddleworthy's disappearance had absolutely the audacity to acknowledge that on that very morning he had been out with his rifle deerstocking in the immediate neighborhood of the pool where the blood-stained waistcoat had been discovered through the sagacity of Mr. Goodfellow. This latter now came forward, and with tears in his eyes asked permission to be examined. He said that a stern sense of the duty he owed his maker not less than his fellow men would permit him no longer to remain silent. Here, the two, the sincerest affection for the young man, notwithstanding the letters ill-treatment of himself, Mr. Goodfellow, had induced him to make every hypothesis which imagination could suggest, by way of endeavoring to account for what appeared suspicious in the circumstances that told so seriously against Mr. Penafeather. But these circumstances were now altogether too convincing, too damning. He would hesitate no longer. He would tell all he knew, although his heart, Mr. Goodfellow's, should absolutely burst asunder in the effort. He then went on to state that on the afternoon of the day previous to Mr. Shuddleworthy's departure for the city, that worthy old gentleman had mentioned to his nephew in his hearing, Mr. Goodfellow's, that his object in going to town on the morrow was to make it a positive and unusually large sum of money in the farmers and mechanics bank, and that then and there the said Mr. Shuddleworthy had distinctly avowed to the same nephew his irrevocable determination of rescinding the will originally made, and of cutting him off with a shilling. He, the witness now solemnly called upon the accused to state whether what he, the witness, had just stated was or was not the truth in every substantial particular. Much to the astonishment of everyone present, Mr. Penafeather frankly admitted that it was. The magistrate now considered it his duty to send a couple of constables to search the chamber of the accused in the house of his uncle. From this search they almost immediately returned with the well-known steel-bound, russet leather pocket book which the old gentleman had been in the habit of carrying for years. Its valuable contents however had been abstracted, and the magistrate in vain endeavored to extort from the prisoner the use which had been made of them, or the place of their concealment. Indeed, he obstinately denied all knowledge of the matter. The constables also discovered between the bed and sacking of the unhappy man a shirt and neck anchorchief both marked with the initials of his name and both hideously besmeared with the blood of the victim. At this juncture it was announced that the horse of the murdered man had just expired in the stable from the effects of the wound he had received, and it was proposed by Mr. Goodfellow that a post-mortem examination of the beast should be immediately made with a view if possible of discovering the ball. This was accordingly done, and as if to demonstrate beyond a question the guilt of the accused, Mr. Goodfellow, after considerable searching in the cavity of the chest, was enabled to detect and to pull forth a bullet a very extraordinary size which upon trial was found to be exactly adapted to the bore of Mr. Pennefeather's rifle, while it was far too large for that of any other person in the burrow or its vicinity to render the matter even sure yet. However, this bullet was discovered to have a flaw or seam at right angles to the usual suture, and upon examination this seam corresponded precisely with an accidental ridge or elevation in a pair of molds acknowledged by the accused himself to be his own property. Upon the finding of this bullet the examining magistrate refused to listen to any further testimony and immediately committed the prisoner for trial, declining resolutely to take any bail in the case. Although against this severity Mr. Goodfellow very warmly remonstrated and offered to become surety in whatever amount might be required. This generosity on the part of old Charlie was only in accordance with the whole tenor of his amiable and chivalrous conduct during the entire period of his sojourn in the burrow of rattle. In the present instance the worthy man was so entirely carried away by the excessive warmth of his sympathy that he seemed to have quite forgotten when he offered to go bail for his young friend that he himself Mr. Goodfellow did not possess a single dollar's worth of property upon the face of the earth. The result of the committal may be readily foreseen. Mr. Pennyfeather amid the loud execrations of all rattle burrow was brought to trial at the next criminal sessions when the chain of circumstantial evidence strengthened as it was by some additional damning facts which Mr. Goodfellow's sensitive conscientiousness forbade him to withhold from the court was considered so unbroken and so thoroughly conclusive that the jury without leaving their seats returned an immediate verdict of guilty of murder in the first degree. Soon afterwards the unhappy wretch received sentence of death and was remanded to the county jail to await the inexorable vengeance of the law. In the meantime the noble behaviour of old Charlie Goodfellow had doubly endeared him to the honest citizens of the burrow. He became ten times a greater favourite than ever and as a natural result of the hospitality with which he was treated he relaxed as it were perforce the extremely parsimonious habits which his poverty had hitherto impaled him to observe and very frequently had little reunions at his own house when wit and jollity reigned supreme dampened a little of course by the occasional remembrance of the untoward and melancholy fate which impended over the nephew of the late lamented bosom friend of the generous host. One fine day this magnanimous old gentleman was agreeably surprised at the receipt of the following letter. Charles Goodfellow Esquire, dear sir, in conformity with an order transmitted to our firm about two months since by our steamed correspondent Mr. Barnabas shuttleworthy we have the honor of forwarding this morning to your address a double box of chateau margot of the antelope brand violet seal box numbered and marked as per margin we remain sir your most obedient servants hogs frogs bogs and company city of blink june 21st 18 dash p.s the box will reach you by wagon on the day after your receipt of this letter our respects to mr shuttleworthy hfb and company charles goodfellow esquire rattle burrow from hfb and company chateau margot a number one six dozen bts one half gross the fact is