E "WRONG MAN'S" STORY

It happened like this: I was in Denver. I had been there many years;
sometimes I remember how many, sometimes I don't--but it isn't any
matter. All of a sudden I got a notice to leave, or I would be exposed
for a horrible crime committed long before--years and years before--in
the East.

I knew about that crime, but I was not the criminal; it was a cousin
of mine of the same name. What should I better do? My head was all
disordered by fear, and I didn't know. I was allowed very little
time--only one day, I think it was. I would be ruined if I was
published, and the people would lynch me, and not believe what I said.
It is always the way with lynchings: when they find out it is a mistake
they are sorry, but it is too late--the same as it was with Mr. Holmes,
you see. So I said I would sell out and get money to live on, and run
away until it blew over and I could come back with my proofs. Then I
escaped in the night and went a long way off in the mountains somewhere,
and lived disguised and had a false name.

I got more and more troubled and worried, and my troubles made me see
spirits and hear voices, and I could not think straight and clear on any
subject, but got confused and involved and had to give it up, because
my head hurt so. It got to be worse and worse; more spirits and more
voices. They were about me all the time; at first only in the night,
then in the day too. They were always whispering around my bed and
plotting against me, and it broke my sleep and kept me fagged out,
because I got no good rest.

And then came the worst. One night the whispers said, "We'll never
manage, because we can't see him, and so can't point him out to the
people."

They sighed; then one said: "We must bring Sherlock Holmes. He can be
here in twelve days."

They all agreed, and whispered and jibbered with joy. But my heart
broke; for I had read about that man, and knew what it would be to
have him upon my track, with his superhuman penetration and tireless
energies.

The spirits went away to fetch him, and I got up at once in the middle
of the night and fled away, carrying nothing but the hand-bag that had
my money in it--thirty thousand dollars; two-thirds of it are in the bag
there yet. It was forty days before that man caught up on my track.
I just escaped. From habit he had written his real name on a tavern
register, but had scratched it out and written "Dagget Barclay" in the
place of it. But fe