"When the janitor got his breath he busted in on Ike and the others sittin' 'round swappin' lies how they'd catch Dick, and Ike reached for his gun and crep' up the ladder with two deputies behind him, and Ike was so scared and so 'fraid he'd lose the money that he fired 'fore Dick got on his feet. The ball broke his leg, and they all jumped in and clubbed him over the head and carried him downstairs for dead in his blankets, and laid him on a butcher's table in the market, and all the folks in the market crowded 'round to look at him, lyin' there with his head hangin' down over the table like a stuck calf's, and his clothes all bloody. Then Ike handcuffed him and started for Stoneburg in a wagon 'fore Dick come to." "That's why he couldn't walk to-night," I asked, "and why the driver took him over in the stage?" "Yes, that was it. He'll never get over it. Sometimes he's all right, and then ag'in it hurts him terrible, 'specially when the weather's bad. "All the time he was up to Stoneburg them last four years--he got a year off for good behavior--he kept makin' little things and sellin' 'em to the visitors. Everybody went to his cell--it was the first place the warders took 'em, and they all bought things from Dick. He had a nice word for everybody, kind and comforting-like. He was the handiest feller you ever see. When he got out he had twenty-nine dollars. He give every cent to his mother. Warden told him when he left he hadn't had no better man in the prison since he had been 'p'inted. And there ain't no better feller now. It's a darned mean shame how Chris Rankin and them fellers is down on him, knowin', too, how it all turned out." I leaned back in my chair and looked at the landlord. I was conscious of a slight choking in my throat which could hardly be traced to the dryness of the beef. I was conscious, too, of a peculiar affection of the eyes. Two or three lamps seemed to be swimming around the room, and one or more blurred landlords were talking to me with elbows on tables. "What do you think yourself about that money of the farmer's?" I asked automatically, though I do not think even now that I had the slightest suspicion of his guilt. "Do you believe he stole the three dollars when he handed the wallet back?" "Stole 'em? Not by a d---- sight! Didn't I tell you? Thought I had. That galoot of a farmer dropped it in the woods 'longside the road when he got out to fix his traces, and he was too full of Chris Rankin's rum to remember it, and after Dick had been sent up for the second time, the second time now, mind ye, and had been in two years for walking off with Rankin's ham, a lot of school children huntin' for ches'nuts come upon that same envelope in the ditch with them three new dollars in it, covered up under the leaves and the weeds a-growin' over it. Ben Mulford's girl found it." "What, the child he had with him tonight?" "Yes, little freckle-faced girl with white eyes. Oh, I tell you Dick's awful fond of that kid."