"There speaks the great detective," he said. "You know, Harley, how Hobart is always arguing from the effect back to the cause."

Hobart, in fact, was not a political writer, but a "murder mystery" man, and the best of his kind in New York, but the regular staff correspondent of his paper, the _Leader_, being ill, he had been sent in his place. He was a Harvard graduate and a gentleman with a taste for poetry, but he had a peculiar mind, upon which a murder mystery acted as an irritant--he could not rest until he had solved it--and his paper always put him on the great cases, such as those in which a vast metropolis like New York abounds. Now he was restless and discontented; the tour seemed to him the mere reporting of speeches and obvious incidents that everybody saw; there was nothing to unravel, nothing that called for the keen edge of a fine intellect.

"Grayville, with all its advantages as a place of rest, is sure to be like the other mountain towns," he said, somewhat sourly--"the same houses, the same streets, the same people, I might almost say the same mountains. There will be nothing unusual, nothing out of the way."

Harley had taken the paper from Barton's hands and was reading it.

"At any rate, if Grayville is not unusual, it is to have an unusual time," he interrupted.

"How so?"

"It is to hear Jimmy Grayson speak Monday, and it is going to hang a man Tuesday. See, the two events get equal advance s.p.a.ce, two columns each, on the front page."

He handed the paper to Hobart, who looked at it a little while and then dropped it with an air of increasing discontent.

"That may mean something to the natives," he said; "it may be an indication to them that their place is becoming important--a metropolis in which things happen--but it is nothing to me. This hanging case is stale and commonplace; it is perfectly clear; a young fellow named Boyd is to be hanged for killing his partner, another miner; no doubt about his guilt, plenty of witnesses against him, his own denial weak and halting--in fact, half a confession; jury out only five minutes; whole thing as bald and flat as this plain through which we are running."

He tapped with his finger on the dusty car-window, and his expression was so gloomy that the others could not restrain a laugh.

"Cheer up, old man," said Barton. "Four more hours and we are in Grayville; just think of that wonderful hotel, with its more wonderful beds and its yet more wonderful kitchen."

The hotel was all that they either expected or hoped, and the dawn brought a beautiful Sunday, disclosing a pretty little frontier city with its green, irrigated valley on one side and the brown mountains, like a protecting wall, on the other. Harley slept late, and after breakfast came out upon the veranda to enjoy the luxury of a rocking-chair, with the soft October air around him and the majesty of the mountains before him. He hoped to find Sylvia there, but neither she nor any of the ladies was present. Instead, there was a persistent, inquiring spirit abroad which would not let him rest, and this spirit belonged to Hobart, the "mystery" man.

Harley had not been enjoying the swinging ease of the rocking-chair five minutes before Hobart, the light of interest in his eyes, pounced upon him.

"Harley, old fellow," he exclaimed, "this is the first place we've struck in which Jimmy Grayson is not the overwhelming attraction."

"The hanging, I suppose," said Harley, carelessly.

"Of course. What else could there be? It occurred to me last night, when I was reading the paper, that I might scare up a feature or two in the case, and I was out of my bed early this morning to try. It was a forlorn hope, I'll admit, but anything was better than nothing, and I've had my reward. I've had my reward, old fellow!"

He chuckled outright in his glee. Harley smiled. Hobart always interested and amused him. The instinctive way in which he unfailingly rose to a "case" showed his natural genius for that sort of thing.

"I haven't seen Boyd yet," continued Hobart, excitedly, "but I've found out this much already--there are people in Grayville who believe Boyd innocent. It is true that he and Wofford--the murdered man--had been quarrelling in Grayville, and Boyd was taken at the shanty with the blood-stained knife in his hand; but that doesn't settle it."

Harley could not restrain an incredulous laugh. "It seems to me those two circ.u.mstances, omitting the other proof, are pretty convincing," he said.

Hobart flushed. "You just wait until I finish," he said, somewhat defiantly. "Now Boyd, as I have learned, was a good-hearted, generous young fellow. The quarrel amounted to very little, and probably had been patched up before they reached their shack."

"That is a view which the jury evidently could not take."

"Juries are often wooden-headed."

"Of course--in the eyes of superior people."

"Now don't you try to be satirical--it's not your specialty. I mean to finish the tale. If you read the paper, you will recall that the shanty where the murder occurred was only a short distance from the mountain-road, and there were three witnesses--Bill Metzger, a dissolute cowboy who was pa.s.sing, and who, attracted by Wofford's death-cry, ran to the cabin and found Boyd, blood-stained knife in hand, bending over the murdered man; Ed Thorpe, a tramp miner, who heard the same cry and who came up two or three minutes later; and, finally, Tim Williams, a town idler, who was on the mountain-side, hunting. The other two heard him fire his gun a few hundred yards away, and called to him. When he arrived, Boyd was still dazed and muttering to himself, as if overpowered by the horror of his crime."

"If that isn't conclusive, then nothing is," said Harley, decisively.

"It is not conclusive; there was no real motive for Boyd to do such a thing."

"To whom did the knife belong?"

"It was a long bread-knife that the two used at the cabin."

"There you are! Proof on proof!"

"Now, you keep silent, Harley, and come with me, like a good fellow, and see Boyd in the jail. If you don't, I swear I'll pester the life out of you for a week."

Harley rose reluctantly, as he knew that Hobart would keep his word. He believed it the idlest of errands, but the jail was only a short distance from them, and the business would not take long. On the way Hobart talked to him about the three witnesses. Metzger, the cowboy, on the day of the murder, had been riding in from a ranch farther down the valley; the other two had been about the town until a short time before the departure of Boyd and Wofford for their cabin.

They reached the jail, a conspicuous stone building in the centre of the town, and were shown into the condemned man's cell. The jailer announced them with the statement:

"Tim, here's two newspaper fellers from the East wants to see you."

The prisoner was lying on a pallet in the corner of his cell, and he raised himself on his elbow when Harley and Hobart entered.

"You are writers for the papers?" he said.

"Yes, clean from New York; they are with Jimmy Grayson," the jailer answered for them.

"I don't know as I've got anythin' to say to you," continued the prisoner. "I 'ain't got no picture to give you, an' if I had one I wouldn't give it. I don't want my hangin' to be all wrote up in the papers, with pictures an' things, too, jest to please the people in the East. If I've got to die, I'd rather do it quiet and peaceful, among the boys I know. I ain't no free circus."

"We did not come to write you up; it was for another purpose," Harley hastened to say.

He was surprised at the youth of the prisoner, who obviously was not over twenty-one, a mere boy, with good features and a look half defiant, half appealing.

"Well, what did you come for, then?" asked the boy.

Harley was unable to answer this question, and he looked at Hobart as if to indicate the one who would reply. The "mystery" man did not seek to evade his responsibility in the least, and promptly said:

"Mr. Boyd, I think you will acquit us of any intention to intrude upon you. It was the best of motives that brought us to you. I have always had an interest in cases of this sort, and when I heard of yours in the train, coming here, I received an impression then which has been strengthened on my arrival in Grayville. I believe you are innocent."

The boy looked up. A sudden flash of grat.i.tude, almost of hope, appeared in his eyes.

"I am!" he cried. "G.o.d knows I didn't kill Bill Wofford. He wuz my partner and we wuz like brothers. We did quarrel that mornin'--I don't deny it--and we both had been liquorin'; but I'd never hev struck him a blow of any kind, least of all a foul one."

"Was it not true that you were found with the b.l.o.o.d.y knife in your hand, standing over his yet warm body?" asked Hobart.

"It's so, but it was somebody else that used the knife. Bill went on ahead, and when I come into the place I saw him on the floor an' the knife in 'im. I was struck all a-heap, but I did what anybody else would 'a' done--I pulled the knife out. And then the fellers come in on me. I was rushed into a trial right away. Of course, I couldn't tell a straight tale; the horror of it was still in my brain, and the effect o' the liquor, too. I got all mixed up--but before G.o.d, gen'lemen, I didn't do it."

His tone was strong with sincerity, and his expression was rather that of grief than remorse. Harley, who had had a long experience with all kinds of men in all kinds of situations, did not believe that he was either bad or guilty. Hobart spoke his thoughts aloud.

"I don't think you did it," he said.

"Everybody believes I did," said Boyd, with pathetic resignation, "and I am to be hanged for it. So what does it matter now?"

"I am going to look for the guilty man," said Hobart, decidedly.