W

HO the fellow was, or whence he came, nobody knew. First a sheriff's deputy, driving through the country serving writs, overtook him briskly walking the grass-bordered, gray highway between the sooty, machinewhirring, big town of Kenworthy and the sooty, machine-whirring, small town of Conway, and said to himself, "Another tramp; the country is overrun with them!" After several wide detours from the highway, to serve a summons here and there and throw the farmers into fear lest their presence should be demanded by the court, the deputy came, late in the day, to Conway itself, and there encountered the tramp again, standing listlessly at the chief corner in the town. A few days later, driving to Conway again on an official mission, he met the tramp walking from Conway; and the next day he discovered him standing listlessly on a corner in Kenworthy. Thenceforward he never went to Conway- and he went often but either he left the tramp standing on that same corner in Kenworthy, or found him standing at the chief corner in Conway, or else encountered him walking briskly to and fro along the highway. Thus the deputy came to look out for him, and almost to compute distances by him, as he computed distances by a certain great willow that stood beside a creek, and a certain violet schoolhouse that sat in a bit of wood, and a certain abandoned platform-scale that rotted at a crossroad. He inquired of the farmers whom he knew along the way if they had noticed the strange fellow a man of about medium height, with brown or reddish beard and patched shoes that gaped at /the toes.

Yes, they had noticed him, and had wondered at his odd habit of walking always between Kenworthy and Conway. Most tramps were like half-hooked fishes: you saw them once and never again, at least to know them. But he kept to this

one piece of road, and walked it as if that were the business of his life, beginning his twelve-mile journey anew almost as soon as he had completed it, and never loitering by the way, but walking swiftly straight ahead, as if he must cover the distance by a given time. They didn't see how the man lived. He must sleep in haymows and under strawstacks, and he must beg. But he never begged of them, and if his bed were ever made in the haymows or under their straw-stacks, they didn't know it.

. It was not altogether comfortable, some of the farmers said, having such a fellow wandering up and down the road; and one didn't know what mischief he might do. But they had never detected anything vicious in him- they must say that.

His face, when you got a square look at it, was not a bad one. It wore the stains and scars of exposure, to be sure; but the features were delicate what one might call a high-bred nose, and the gentlest of blue-brown eyes, though always with a half-scared look in them.

Had any of them ever talked with the man? the deputy asked. No, no one ever had. One or two had resolved to, and had even accosted him with the design of drawing him into conversation. But he had made only a mumbled answer, or none; had seemed almost frightened and quickened his pace; and so they let him go. It wasn't quite fair to force the man to talk, they thought; and yet they would like to know something about him.

Through some three years, in all seasons and weathers, the tramp maintained his strange constancy to the Kenworthy and Conway highway. The baffled wonder of the farmers finally wore itself out, and they gave him up as an insoluble riddle. A silent semi-friendship for him gradually established itself in them. From all the conversational ambushes laid for him he had kept himself free, and he

had still not even a look, much less a word, of greeting for any one as he hurried over his wonted course. Nevertheless, the sight of him by its very frequency came to have a touch of pleasantness in it, akin to that in the sight of an old friend.

II.

In the number of his rich acres, Royal Stevens was easily the foremost of the farmers dwelling along the Kenworthy and Conway highway. On Royal's farm, in a wide barnyard that in the spring and early summer was a perfect cushion of greenness, stood a great white barn which, in its size and completeness, was the pride of the whole country. One night, soon after Royal and his household had gone to bed, this barn suddenly burst into flames, and in an hour was swept utterly away, with the horses and cattle stalled within and a large store of hay and grain. No cause was discoverable for the disaster; a cause rarely is discoverable in the burning of country barns. It came as wingless and footless as a very miracle; and, like a miracle, it inspired endless speculation. The sheriff's deputy, however, into the rusty-iron basins of whose nature a fountain of professional pride was ever playing, started all of his conjectures and rested all of his conclusions on the principle that every malefaction has its malefactor. The burning of Stevens' barn, since there had been no lightning seen lurking about in the vicinity that night, was clearly a malefaction. Who, then, was the malefactor? One must not in these cases, the sheriff's deputy said, say too swiftly what one suspects, else there will be flights and a covering-up of clues, and finally a complete defeat of the ends of justice. He had, however, he didn't mind confessing, some very well-settled notions as to how the burning of Steven's barn came about. On one On one or two occasions, indeed, he so far forgot professional reserve and caution as to even drop the word, "Tramp."

Little less keen than a deputy sheriff's is the scent of other men for the trail of evil deeds different from their own. The one word "tramp," therefore, dropped cautiously, and but once or twice by the

sheriff's deputy, sufficed to bring half the neighborhood to settled conclusions regarding the origin of the Stevens fire. The tattered wretch who had been ceaselessly treading the Kenworthy and Conway highway these three years back — so far as any one could detect, in the utmost harmlessness-fell under an all but unanimous suspicion. Many persons just knew that it was he who had set fire to Stevens's barn, and they knew, too, that he had done it designedly. Others did not profess to positively know they didn't wish to do any man an injustice; but if it were not the tramp who started the fire, they didn't know who it could have been, though they were willing to concede that even the tramp might have done it by accident.

The tramp pursued his own way after, as before, the fire, with his old inexplicable infatuation. But suspicions strengthened here and there into expressions of anger, and some murmur of them coming to the deputy's ears, that enterprising officer concluded that an arrest ought to be made, and urged Stevens to swear out a warrant. Possessed of the litigious spirit of his class, which had several times led him to expend, for the price of a hog, the price of three or four acres of good land in court costs and lawyer's fees, Stevens easily yielded to the deputy's solicitations; and the deputy set forth to take the tramp into the outraged law's embraces. But though he drove the whole length of the Kenworthy and Conway highway, carefully scanning every turn and corner, and though he searched the two sooty towns through and through, the man who theretofore was always to be seen without looking was now nowhere to be seen at all. And never was he seen again either at the wonted corner in Kenworthy, or at the wonted corner in Conway, or in the intervening way so long and diligently traversed.

For a time the man's disappearance was as mysterious as his coming and his subsequent busy journeyings had been. But the rivalries of the neighborhood over the distinction of having seen him last, brought to light the fact that the very day before the deputy set forth to make the

arrest, a neighbor of Stevens had met the tramp in the highway and cried out: "Do you still hang round here, you dd barn-burner?" He got in return the one direct, eye-to-eye look that any man was ever known to have had from the tramp in all the time that he had been in that region - a look so startled, so pleading, that, as he afterwards confessed, he was filled with contrition and could hardly restrain himself from getting down from his wagon and taking the tramp by the hand and saying, "Stay here as long as you will; I will take care of you."

But

To the neighborhood at large the tramp's disappearance was a confirmation of all suspicions, but the man to whom it had fallen to have the last sight of him ever stoutly maintained his innocence. In time Stevens himself gave adherence to this neighbor's view of the case. it was a strenuously silent adherence; for he had learned by a late confession that on the eve of the destruction of his barn his own boy had been playing about it with fire, and that matter, at this late day, he thought the less said about the better.

III.

THE pursuers of offenders are a farreaching class. A humble sheriff's deputy often finds himself far from home in pursuit of fugitives from justice; and, on a certain occasion, the particular sheriff's deputy of this narrative found himself far from home. He was travelling with all possible speed through a distant state, driven doubly-by the call of justice and the promise of a handsome reward on the safe delivery of the fleeing criminal.

As became a minister of the august penalties, he travelled plainly and unostentatiously: he had made his journey thus far in the smoking-car. But as he had now been out two days and two nights, he resolved, for the third night, to treat himself to the luxury of a berth in the sleeping-car. And thus it chanced that a certain rude jerking and abrupt stop that, far on in the night, produced a good deal of consternation in the forward part of the train, left him undisturbed in

the resounding slumber that betokened the untroubled conscience and fat figure of a faithful public servant. Day had fully dawned ere the deputy realized that the train was at a standstill in a place where there seemed to be no station; and even yet he had received no intimation that it had come to this standstill by violence. In mild curiosity, however, he sauntered out upon the platform to look about him. To his surprise he found most of the passengers standing in a crowd beside the baggage-car, and showing signs of much excitement. He descended and hastened forward as rapidly as his scantness of breath would admit. He found the baggage-car half dismounted from one of its trucks, and the locomotive-tender lying across the track. An axle on the tender, the deputy soon learned, had broken. It was a tedious delay they were having, the passengers agreed; but they were thankful that they had come off so well. The train couldn't have been running at its usual speed, else the result must have been worse. Was nobody hurt? Nobody. Not a passenger had received even so much as a scratch. Oh, yes, there was the tramp! They had forgotten the tramp - the tramp was killed! He had stolen a ride on the forward' platform of the baggagecar, and the violence of the stop had thrown him underneath. He would never steal another ride! It was rather pitiful, when one thought about it!

Tramps were but tramps, however, in the estimation of the deputy, as in that of most of his fellow-passengers; and the killing of one was, with him as with them, not a momentous matter. Nevertheless, the deputy made it a principle never to miss seeing all that there was to be seen; and the body of a man killed in a railway accident, however humble a man, was too rare a spectacle to be passed by. Where was the tramp? A little mound of tarpaulin on the grass, not far away, was pointed out to him.

Stooping over the little mound, the deputy turned back the corner of the tarpaulin. A horror so strong as to almost overthrow him, well toughened though he was by nature and vocation, twisted his features and shook his legs.