The telegram was signed by Homer and by Barrett, the superintendent of police at Rouen.

"It's all a mistake, boys," the lawyer said, as he handed the paper to Watts and Parker for inspection. "The ladies at the judge's were mistaken, that's all, and this proves it. It's easy enough to understand: they were frightened by the storm, and, watching a fence a quarter-mile away by flashes of lightning, any one would have been confused, and imagined all the horrors on earth. I don't deny but what I believed it for a while, and I don't deny but the Cross-Roads is pretty tough, but you've done a good deal here already, to-day, and we're saved in time from a mistake that would have turned out mighty bad. This settles it. Homer got a wire from Rouen to come over there, soon as they got track of the first man; that was when we saw him on the Rouen accommodation."

A slightly cracked voice, yet a huskily tuneful one, was lifted quaveringly on the air from the roadside, where an old man and a yellow dog sat in the dust together, the latter reprieved at the last moment, his surprised head rakishly garnished with a hasty wreath of dog-fennel daisies.

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground, While we go marching on!"

Three-quarters of an hour later, the inhabitants of the Cross-Roads, saved, they knew not how; guilty; knowing nothing of the fantastic pendulum of opinion, which, swung by the events of the day, had marked the fatal moment of guilt, now on others, now on them, who deserved it--these natives and refugees, conscious of atrocity, dumfounded by a miracle, thinking the world gone mad, hovered together in a dark, ragged ma.s.s at the crossing corners, while the skeleton of the rotting buggy in the slough rose behind them against the face of the west. They peered with stupified eyes through the smoky twilight.

From afar, faintly through the gloaming, came mournfully to their ears the many-voiced refrain--fainter, fainter:

"John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground, John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground.

John Brown's body lies--mould-- ..... we go march.... on."

CHAPTER XII. JERRY THE TELLER At midnight a small brougham stopped at the gates of the city hospital in Rouen. A short distance ahead, the lamps of a cab, drawn up at the curbing, made two dull orange sparks under the electric light swinging over the street. A cigarette described a brief parabola as it was tossed from the brougham, and a short young man jumped out and entered the gates, then paused and spoke to the driver of the cab.

"Did you bring Mr. Barrett here?"

"Yes, sir," answered the driver; "him and two other gentlemen."

Lighting another cigarette, from which he drew but two inspirations before he threw it away, the young man proceeded quickly up the walk.

As he ascended the short flight of steps which led to the main doors, he panted a little, in a way which suggested that (although his white waistcoat outlined an ellipse still respectable) a crescendo of portliness was playing diminuendo with his youth. And, though his walk was brisk, it was not lively. The expression of his very red face indicated that his briskness was spurred by anxiety, and a fattish groan he emitted on the top step added the impression that his comfortable body protested against the mental spur. In the hall he removed his narrow-brimmed straw hat and presented a rotund and amiable head, from the top of which his auburn hair seemed to retire with a sense of defeat; it fell back, however, not in confusion, but in perfect order, and the spa.r.s.e pink mist left upon his crown gave, by a supreme effort, an effect of arrangement, so that an imaginative observer would have declared that there was a part down the middle. The gentleman's plump face bore a grave and troubled expression, and gravity and trouble were patent in all the lines of his figure and in every gesture; in the way he turned his head; in the uneasy shifting of his hat from one hand to the other and in his fanning himself with it in a nervous fashion; and in his small, blue eyes, which did not twinkle behind his rimless gla.s.ses and looked unused to not twinkling. His gravity clothed him like an ill-fitting coat; or, possibly, he might have reminded the imaginative observer, just now conjured up, of a music-box set to turning its cylinder backwards.

He spoke to an attendant, and was directed to an office, which he entered without delay. There were five men in the room, three of them engaged in conversation near the door; another, a young surgeon, was writing at a desk; the fifth drowsily nodding on a sofa. The newcomer bowed as he entered.

"Mr. Barrett?" he said inquiringly.

One of the men near the door turned about. "Yes, sir," he answered, with a stem disfavor of the applicant; a disfavor possibly a perquisite of his office. "What's wanted?"

"I think I have met you," returned the other. "My name is Meredith."

Mr. Barrett probably did not locate the meeting, but the name proved an open sesame to his geniality, for he melted at once, and saying: "Of course, of course, Mr. Meredith; did you want a talk with me?" clasped the young man's hand confidentially in his, and, with an appearance of a.s.suring him that whatever the atrocity which had occurred in the Meredith household it should be discreetly handled and hushed up, indicated a disposition to conduct him toward a more appropriate apartment for the rehearsal of scandal. The young man accepted the hand-clasp with some resignation, but rejected the suggestion of privacy.

"A telegram from Plattville reached me half an hour ago," he said. "I should have had it sooner, but I have been in the country all day."

The two men who had been talking with the superintendent turned quickly, and stared at the speaker. He went on: "Mr. Harkless was an old--and--"

He broke off, with a sudden, sharp choking, and for a moment was unable to control an emotion that seemed, for some reason, as surprising and unbefitting, in a person of his rubicund presence, as was his gravity.

An astonished tear glittered in the corner of his eye. The grief of the gayer sorts of stout people appears, sometimes, to dumfound even themselves. The young man took off his gla.s.ses and wiped them slowly.

"--An old and very dear friend of mine." He replaced the gla.s.ses insecurely upon his nose. "I telephoned to your headquarters, and they said you had come here."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir," the superintendent of police responded, cheerfully. "These two gentlemen are from Plattville; Mr. Smith just got in. They mighty near had big trouble down there to-day, but I guess we'll settle things for 'em up here. Let me make you acquainted with my friend, Mr. Smith, and my friend, Mr. Homer. Gentlemen, my friend, Mr.

Meredith, one of our well-known citizens."

"You hear it from the police, gentlemen," added Mr. Meredith, perking up a little. "I know Dr. Gay." He nodded to the surgeon.

"I suppose you have heard some of the circ.u.mstances--those that we've given out," said Barrett.

"I read the account in the evening paper. I had heard of Harkless, of Carlow, before; but it never occurred to me that it was my friend--I had heard he was abroad--until I got this telegram from a relative of mine who happened to be down there."

"Well," said the superintendent, "your friend made a mighty good fight before he gave up. The Teller, that's the man we've got out here, he's so hacked up and shot and battered his mother wouldn't know him, if she wanted to; at least, that's what Gay, here, says. We haven't seen him, because the doctors have been at him ever since he was found, and they expect to do some more tonight, when we've had our interview with him, if he lives long enough. One of my sergeants found him in, the freight-yards about four-o'clock and sent him here in the ambulance; knew it was Teller, because he was stowed away in one of the empty cars that came from Plattville last night, and Slattery--that's his running mate, the one we caught with the coat and hat--gave in that they beat their way on that freight. I guess Slattery let this one do most of the fighting; he ain't scratched; but Mr. Harkless certainly made it hot for the Teller."

"My relative believes that Mr. Harkless is still alive," said Meredith.

Mr. Barrett permitted himself an indulgent smile. He had the air of having long ago discovered everything which anybody might wish to know, and of knowing a great deal which he held in reserve because it was necessary to suppress many facts for a purpose far beyond his auditor's comprehension, though a very simple matter to himself.

"Well, hardly, I expect," he replied, easily. "No; he's hardly alive."

"Oh, don't say that," said Meredith.

"I'm afraid Mr. Barrett has to say it," broke in Warren Smith. "We're up here to see this fellow before he dies, to try and get him to tell what disposal they made of the----"

"Ah!" Meredith shivered. "I believe I'd rather he said the other than to hear you say that."

Mr. Horner felt the need of defending a fellow-townsman, and came to the rescue, flushing painfully. "It's mighty bad, I know," said the sheriff of Carlow, the shadows of his honest, rough face falling in a solemn pattern; "I reckon we hate to say it as much as you hate to hear it; and Warren really didn't get the word out. It's stuck in our throats all day; and I don't recollect as I heard a single man say it before I left our city this morning. Our folks thought a great deal of him, Mr.

Meredith; I don't believe there's any thinks more. But it's come to that now; you can't hardly see no chance left. We be'n sweating this other man, Slattery, but we can't break him down. Jest tells us to go to"--the sheriff paused, evidently deterred by the thought that swear-words were unbefitting a hospital--"to the other place, and shets his jaw up tight.

The one up here is called the Teller, as Mr. Barrett says; his name's Jerry the Teller. Well, we told Slattery that Jerry had died and left a confession; tried to make him think there wasn't no hope fer him, and he might as well up and tell his share; might git off easier; warned him to look out for a mob if he didn't, maybe, and so on, but it never bothered him at all. He's nervy, all right. Told us to go--that is, he said it again--and swore the Teller was on his way to Chicago, swore he seen him git on the train. Wouldn't say another word tell he got a lawyer. So, 'soon as it was any use, we come up here--they reckon he'll come to before he dies. We'll be glad to have you go in with us," Horner said kindly. "I reckon it's all the same to Mr. Barrett."

"He will die, will he, Gay?" Meredith asked, turning to the surgeon.

"Oh, not necessarily," the young man replied, yawning slightly behind his hand, and too long accustomed to straightforward questions to be shocked at an evident wish for a direct reply. "His chances are better, because they'll hang him if he gets well. They took the ball and a good deal of shot out of his side, and there's a lot more for afterwhile, if he lasts. He's been off the table an hour, and he's still going."

"That's in his favor, isn't it?" said Meredith. "And extraordinary, too?" If young Dr. Gay perceived a slur in these interrogations he betrayed no exterior appreciation of it.

"Shot!" exclaimed Homer. "Shot! I knowed there'd be'n a pistol used, though where they got it beats me--we stripped 'em--and it wasn't Mr.

Harkless's; he never carried one. But a shot-gun!"

An attendant entered and spoke to the surgeon, and Gay rose wearily, touched the drowsy young man on the shoulder, and led the way to the door. "You can come now," he said to the others; "though I doubt its being any good to you. He's delirious."

They went down a long hall and up a narrow corridor, then stepped softly into a small, quiet ward.

There was a pungent smell of chemicals in the room; the light was low, and the dimness was imbued with a thick, confused murmur, incoherent whisperings that came from a cot in the corner. It was the only cot in use in the ward, and Meredith was conscious of a terror that made him dread, to look at it, to go near it. Beside it a nurse sat silent, and upon it feebly tossed the racked body of him whom Barrett had called Jerry the Teller.

The head was a shapeless bundle, so swathed it was with bandages and cloths, and what part of the face was visible was discolored and pigmented with drugs. Stretched under the white sheet the man looked immensely tall--as Horner saw with vague misgiving--and he lay in an odd, inhuman fashion, as though he had been all broken to pieces.

His attempts to move were constantly soothed by the nurse, and he as constantly renewed such attempts; and one hand, though torn and bandaged, was not to be restrained from a wandering, restless movement which Meredith felt to be pathetic. He had entered the room with a flare of hate for the thug whom he had come to see die, and who had struck down the old friend whose nearness he had never known until it was too late. But at first sight of the broken figure he felt all animosity fall away from him; only awe remained, and a growing, traitorous pity as he watched the long, white fingers of the Teller "pick at the coverlet."

The man was muttering rapid fragments of words, and syllables.

"Somehow I feel a sense of wrong," Meredith whispered to Gay. "I feel as if I had done the fellow to death myself, as if it were all out of gear.

I know, now, how Henry felt over the great Guisard. My G.o.d, how tall he looks! That doesn't seem to me like a thug's hand."

The surgeon nodded. "Of course, if there's a mistake to be made, you can count on Barrett and his sergeants to make it. I doubt if this is their man. When they found him what clothes he wore were torn and stained; but they had been good once, especially the linen."

Barrett bent over the rec.u.mbent figure. "See here. Jerry," he said, "I want to talk to you a little. Rouse up, will you? I want to talk to you as a friend."

The incoherent muttering continued.

"See here, Jerry!" repeated Barrett, more sharply. "Jerry! rouse up, will you? We don't want any fooling; understand that, Jerry!" He dropped his hand on the man's shoulder and shook him slightly. The Teller uttered a short, gasping cry.