FROM THE LIFE
dock in the back as he sat at the table, and shot Mrs. Murdock point-blank as she ran in from the other room to see what had happened. They had both been dead for hours when Mrs. Heins came on them.
The sheriff drove off at once to send out an alarm for the jailbird. A deputy took charge of the preparations for the inquest and cleared the house of sight-seers. They moved on to the Heinses', and the hired man went with them.
6
In all this there was no thought of Murdock's son, Ben. Or if any one thought of him it was only to wonder where he was and who would notify him. The whole valley knew that he had quarreled with his father, that he had not been home for years, that if his mother heard from him she did not mention it. And no one recognized him when, toward midnight, a tall stranger came to the Heinses' kitchen door with a suit-case in his hand. He stood scrutinizing the group of late-stayers in the lamp-light around the kitchen table, looked from them to the hired man who sat alone smoking beside the range, and asked, abruptly, "Are you Murdock's man?"
They supposed he was a detective. He wore city blacks and a black felt hat and a starched collar. The hired man slowly turned his head—a classical head, the head and bronzed profile of a Cæsar on a
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