ich
compelled them to leave the train and get across the country to the Big
Four or the Wabash. The reason he mentioned Thorntown particularly was
because he had a wealthy aunt residing there, and he was thinking some
of stopping to make her a short visit.

"But what do you carry in that roll, wrapped in light paper, sticking
up through your inside coat pocket?" asked Beasley.

"A present for my aunt," was the laconic reply.

Turning to Mr. Cushman, the quiet gentleman who was on his way to
college, Beasley asked: "What are you carrying those iron articles for
in your overcoat pocket, that I'm sitting on; you are not going to open
a hardware store in connection with the school, are you?"

Just then they came to a bend in the highway and the depot was visible
only a short distance ahead, and just at that instant, without stopping
to answer the question, Mr. Cushman and the big fellow jumped out, and
the big fellow said they guessed they would walk the remainder of the
way.

"All right," said Beasley, who stopped his horse and commenced to look
for a good place to turn around. On his way back he said to himself:
"they are a queer pair." They were soon out of his mind however, and
in a few minutes more he was home attending to his chores, just as
though he had not received one-fifty for almost nothing.

Tuesday morning the weather was a little lowering, so he concluded to
drive into town and learn how many were killed in the I. B. & W. wreck.
When he learned that there had been no wreck on the I. B. & W. or on
any other railroad, he said to Mrs. Beasley: "How could those fellows,
whom I carried yesterday morning, have had the audacity to tell me such
a cold-blooded falsehood?"

A few minutes later when Mrs. Beasley had heard of the robbery, she
answered the question.

In my interview with Beasley, he informed me that he looked the young
men over very closely, and so firmly were their features impressed upon
his mind that he could pick them out of ten or fifteen thousand. I had
never met a more sanguine man. I arranged with him to take a few days'
vacation, and, in less than an hour and a half after my arrival in
Attica, I was waiting at the railroad station with Beasley for a train
to take us to Indianapolis.

Thorntown, from Beasley's house was directly on a line toward
Indianapolis, and, while there were many other stations nearer to
Beasley's, Thorntown was the only one between LaFayette and
Indianapoli