FROM THE LIFE
all directions to seek his trail. He was found in the Murdock wood-lot, innocently cutting cedar-trees for fence-posts. He had been there since early morning; the shells of four hard-boiled eggs showed where he had eaten his luncheon, and the trees that he had cut and stripped were numerous enough to occupy a day's industry.
Heins said, suspiciously, "That's more wood 'n I ever seen a hired man cut in one day."
The man replied: "I dunno. Some of 'em, mebbe, was yeste'day's cuttin'."
Heins grumbled, "I thought so." And that conversation, related again and again, was Heins's contribution to the solution of the murder mystery.
At first they did not tell the hired man why they were looking for him, and he resented their questions, sulkily continuing his work. But as soon as he heard of the murder he dropped his ax and ran through the woods to the house, and, coming suddenly on the scene in the kitchen, he fell back down the kitchen steps in a sort of fit. When he had been revived with a drink from a hunter's pocket flask his innocence was conceded.
He could not be persuaded to enter the house. He retreated to the barn, sat down on the wheel of a mowing-machine, and told and retold his story, over and over, to a constantly changing group of men, women, and children. By sundown the whole valley was there, and all the villagers from Wauchock. They wandered around the house, the barn,
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