s, which seemed in the mind of Tescheron, at least, to be
fastening him in the electric chair.

It must have been about 11:30 o'clock when Jim got out of bed and began
to mope around the flat, tramp nervously up and down the private hall
and scuffle through the closets, the cupboard and among the pots and
pans, which fretfully clashed in a heap upon the floor when he sought to
unhook his favorite, the upper story of the double boiler. I wondered
what ailed him now. From the way the alleged murderer was rattling the
crockery and the tinware, back in the kitchen, I knew he had it bad.
What prompted him to invade the kitchen and unhook our outfit I don't
know, but I think he was trying to heat some water, poor chap!--to
accompany a certain pill, on a theory that it was dyspepsia which
disturbed his dreams.

Presently he wandered into the front room, looking badly rumpled. He had
on his yellow and brown dressing gown and a pair of pink-bowed knitted
slippers of a piebald variety, that I had seen displayed by a
neighboring gents' furnishing goods store.

"Ben, what are you doing up this time of night? Pretty late, ain't it?"
he asked.

"Oh, I'm just cogitating," I answered. "You look sick; anything the
matter with you?--and, say, when you go into that kitchen, I wish you
wouldn't chuck everything in the place on the floor for me to pick up."

"I picked 'em all up, Ben," was his meek reply.

I never could scold him, so I forgave him and invited him to sit down
and have a smoke. He fairly jumped at the idea, and it pleased me to see
him bite. I thought then how little Tescheron could know of this
innocent blockhead, Jim Hosley, whose heart and brain traps were built
on the open, sanitary order, with nothing concealed.

Jim continued fidgety and wide-awake as he took his seat near the table
and the county papers. He squirmed on the cushions, smoked hard and
complained of the tobacco, the weather, the police magistrates, his
tight shoes, the careless washerwoman and a string of matters incidental
to the world's work and its burdens that he had never mentioned before
so long as I had lived with him, and that was pretty close to ten years.
It was easy to see that this was no ordinary case. Several times I had
suffered the same sort of misery; had looked for a soft seat and
reposeful thoughts in vain. Jim had not noticed it.

A man who has been forty miles over a mountain road on an empty lumber
wagon knows what thrills ar