So the sheriff was puzzled. That morning the body of Brown Hirst, manager of the Octagon Coal Company, had been picked up in the muddy waters of Tug River, just below the bridge. Above, on the railing of the bridge, his coat and vest had been found, folded and apparently laid carefully over a girder. The bridge was very high above the rocky stream, and the body of the man was badly crushed--almost beyond recognition. The man had evidently jumped from the bridge with the deliberate intention of taking his own life. All this the sheriff had heard as he rode into the town. But rumors are lurid, the sheriff knew, and he concluded to go at once to the prosecuting attorney. He wanted the tale straight from some one who could pry the facts free from the fiction. On the steps of the court-house the sheriff had paused for a moment and made some observations to himself. But a crowd was beginning to gather in the street below, and the sheriff, being fully aware that this portended a demand for his opinion and not being pleased to express one, he turned abruptly and passed into the court-house. The man of order walked leisurely down the hall to the office of the prosecuting attorney and entered. A thin, red-haired girl was pounding a typewriter with the energy of a two-horse-power engine. Conventionalities were abbreviated in McDowell. The sheriff sauntered in. “Where's Jeb?” he drawled. The red-haired girl paused for a moment and jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “In there,” she said, “busy.” Then she went on. Miss McFadden was an economist; she wasted no words. The sheriff threw open the door, and walked into the private office. The prosecuting attorney turned around from the window. “Hello, White!” he said, “you are the very man I want.” “Which indicates,” drawled the sheriff, “that you are a young person of great discernment.” “When one needs horse sense,” said the prosecuting attorney, “your acquaintance is valuable. At other times it is a luxury.” “Together,” observed the sheriff, mildly, “we create a sort of equoasinus intellectual atmosphere, I suppose.” The attorney took up a chair and placed it by the window. “Sit there,” he said, “and listen.” Then he closed the door, and, crossing the room, began to open the safe by his desk. The sheriff sat down meekly and turned his dreamy blue eyes on the young lawyer. The prosecuting attorney of the county of McDowell was an imported article. Like the ancient wise men, he came from the East, but the manner of his coming was not quite that of the early sages. The sheriff had come up from the hills of Virginia, while the prosecuting attorney had come up from the sea. Not that this young scion of the law' was a sailor or the son of a sailor, but on a certain summer afternoon at a certain fashionable resort, Fate suddenly threw away the toys with which she had been amusing him, and he immediately realized that the world was a common treadmill instead of a breezy French drag.