new, and so he left
him without speaking and returned to the prisoner and his guard in front
of the dance-hall. He found them duly waiting; the only change was that
they had a rope there.

"Once upon a time," said the sheriff, "there was a man in Arkansaw that
had no judgment."

"They raise 'em that way in Arkansaw," said the chatty neighbor, as the
company made a circle to hear the story--a tight, cautious circle--with
the prisoner and the officer beside him standing in the centre.

"The man's wife had good judgment," continued the narrator, "but she
went and died on him."

"Well, I guess that _was_ good judgment," said the neighbor.

"So the man, he had to run the farm alone. Now they raised poultry,
which his wife had always attended to. And he knew she had a habit of
setting hens on duck eggs. He had never inquired her reasons, being
shiftless, but that fact he knew. Well, come to investigate the
hen-house, there was duck eggs, and hens on 'em, and also a heap of
hens' eggs, but no more hens wishing to set. So the man, having no
judgment, persuaded a duck to stay with those eggs. Now it's her I'm
chiefly interested in. She was a good enough duck, but hasty. When the
eggs hatched out, she didn't stop to notice, but up and takes them down
to the pond, and gets mad with them, and shoves them in, and they
drowns. Next day or two a lot of the young ducks, they hatched out and
come down with the hen and got in the water all right, and the duck
figured out she'd made some mistake, and she felt distressed. But the
chickens were in heaven."

The sheriff studied his audience, and saw that he had lulled their rage
a little. "Now," said he, "ain't you boys just a trifle like that duck?
I don't know as I can say much to you more than what I have said, and I
don't know as I can do anything, fixed as I am. This thing looks bad for
him we've got here. Why, I can see that as well as you. But, boys! it's
an awful thing to kill an innocent man! I saw that done once, and--God
forgive me!--I was one of them. I'll tell you how that was. He looked
enough like the man we wanted. We were certainly on the right trail. We
came on a cabin we'd never known of before, pretty far up in the
hills--a strange cabin, you see. That seemed just right; just where a
man would hide. We were mad at the crime committed, and took no thought.
We knew we had caught him--that's the way we felt. So we got our guns
ready, and crept up close through the tre