should have such a
son as Absalom.

"I took the old man aside to have a talk with him, to find out where his
son was and where he had been the night before. He was equally vehement
in his declarations of his son's innocence, and of professions of regard
for Halloway. And suddenly to my astonishment he declared that his son
had spent the night with him and had gone away after sunrise.

"Then happened one of those fatuous things that have led to the
detection of so many negroes and can almost be counted on in their
prosecution. Joel took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his
face, and as he did so I recognized the very handkerchief Halloway had
shown me the night before. With the handkerchief, Joel drew out several
splinters of light-wood, one of which had been broken off from a longer
piece. I picked it up and it fitted exactly into the piece that had been
stuck in the crack in the floor. At first, I could scarcely believe
my own senses. Of course, it became my duty to have Joel arrested
immediately. But I was afraid to have it done there, the crowd was
so deeply incensed. So I called the two men to whom I had shown the
light-wood splinter, told them the story, and they promised to get him
away and arrest him quietly and take him safely to jail, which they did.

"Even then we did not exactly believe that the old man had any active
complicity in the crime, and I was blamed for arresting the innocent old
father and letting the guilty son escape. The son, however, was arrested
shortly afterward.

"The circumstances from which the crime arose gave the case something
of a political aspect, and the prisoners had the best counsel to be
procured, both at our local bar and in the capital. The evidence was
almost entirely circumstantial, and when I came to work it up I found,
as often occurs, that although the case was plain enough on the outside,
there were many difficulties in the way of fitting all the circumstances
to prove the guilt of the accused and to make out every link in the
chain. Particularly was this so in the prosecution of the young man,
who was supposed to be the chief criminal, and in whose case there was a
strong effort to prove an alibi.

"As I worked, I found to my surprise that the guilt of the old man,
though based wholly on circumstantial evidence, was established more
clearly than that of his son--not indeed, as to the murders, but as to
the arson, which served just as well to convict on. The