A remarkable case was that in which a tramp was being tried for the murder of a miserly old woman who was believed to carry a large amount of money about her person. The tramp came to her door and asked for food. She took him in and fed him and soon thereafter he was seen hastily to leave the house. An hour after he had gone the woman was found murdered and her clothing rifled. The tramp was overtaken, found to have a large amount of money of small denominations in his pockets, indicted, and placed on trial. The principal witness for the State was a man who was repairing a frozen water pipe in a trench by the side of the house opposite to that by which the tramp entered and left. He saw the blow struck, ran in fear to his home, and then informed the police. In explaining how he came to see the criminal act, he testified that he climbed out of the trench to get a drink from a bucket standing near by, and as he raised the bucket his eye came in line with a window of the house, through which he witnessed the murder. The case seemed clear against the tramp, as other witnesses had seen him enter and leave the house and positively recognized him. Just here his lawyer asked the trench digger how long the water bucket had been sitting by the side of the trench. The latter said it had been there from 7 o’clock until 10. Then the weather records came in to confound the falsifier and to vindicate innocence, for the automatic tracing of the pen that records every movement of the temperature proved that the temperature had not been above zero any time during the three hours that the bucket had been exposed and that it contained a solid chunk of ice if it contained anything. The trench digger then confessed that he himself was the murderer. He had seen the tramp enter and leave and thought it a favorable opportunity to commit the crime and put the evidence on another. CHAPTER VII FROST There is nothing in the study of the atmosphere that so intimately concerns the horticulturist and the gardener as knowledge of the conditions under which frost forms, and the methods that may be pursued to gain immunity from its disastrous effects, or to lessen the loss.