or false
imprisonment would rankle as long as he lived.

This was why he took to the woods on the afternoon of the second day
following Griswold's pistol purchase. He felt himself growing
short-sighted from the very nearness of things. The single necessity now
was for absolute and unshakable identification. To establish this, three
witnesses, and three only, could be called upon. Of the three, two had
failed signally--Miss Farnham because she had her own reasons for
blocking the game, and President Galbraith.... That was another chapter
in the book of failure. Broffin had learned that the president was
stopping at the De Soto Inn, and he had manoeuvred to bring Mr.
Galbraith face to face with Griswold in the Grierson bank on the day
after the pistol-buying. To his astonishment and disgust the president
had shaken his head irritably, adding a rebuke. "Na, na, man; your trade
makes ye over-suspeecious. That's Mr. Griswold, the writer-man and a
friend of the Griersons. Miss Madgie was telling me about him last week.
He's no more like the robber than you are. Haven't I told ye the man was
bearded like a tyke?"

With two of the three eye-witnesses refusing to testify, there remained
only Johnson, the paying teller of the Bayou State Security. Broffin was
considering the advisability of wiring for Johnson when he passed the
last of the houses on the lakeside drive and struck into the country
road which led by cool and shaded forest windings to the resort hotel at
the head of the southern bay. If Johnson should fail--and in view of the
fact that President Galbraith had failed it was a possibility to be
reckoned with--there remained only two doubtful expedients. With Patrick
Sheehan's confession to point the way it might be possible to trace the
transformed deck-hand from his final interview with McGrath on the
_Belle Julie_ step by step to his appearance, sick and delirious, in
Wahaska twenty-four hours later. This was one of the expedients. The
other was to take the long chance by clapping the handcuffs upon
Griswold in some moment of unpreparedness. It was a well-worn trick,
and it did not always succeed in surprising the admission of guilt
necessary to make it hold good. And if it should not hold good, there
might be consequences. As we have noted, Broffin had once clapped the
handcuffs on the wrong man.

Chewing an extinct cigar and ruminating thoughtfully over his problem,
Broffin had followed the windings of the count