"One flash of the lantern told the dismal tale. The man was not only dead, but murdered. His forehead had been battered in with a knotted stick; all his pockets hung out empty; and from the general disorder of his dress it was evident that his watch had been torn away by a ruthless hand. But the face they failed to recognise till some people, running down from the upper town where the alarm had by this time spread, sent up the shout of 'It's Mr. Etheridge! Judge Ostrander's great friend. Let some one run and notify the judge.'
"But the fact was settled long before the judge came upon the scene, and another fact too. In beating the bushes, they had lighted on a heavy stick. When it was brought forward and held under the strong light made by a circle of lanterns, a big movement took place in the crowd. The stick had been recognised. Indeed, it was well known to all the Claymore men. They had seen it in Scoville's hands a dozen times. Even he could not deny its ownership; explaining, or trying to, that he had been in the ravine looking for this stick only a little while before, and adding, as he met their eyes:
"'I lost it in these woods this afternoon. I hadn't anything to do with this killing.'
"He had not been accused; but he found it impossible to escape after this, and when at the instance of Coroner Haines he was carefully looked over and a small red ribbon found in one of his pockets, he was immediately put under arrest and taken to the city lock-up. For the ribbon had been identified as well as the stick. Oliver Ostrander, who had accompanied his father to the scene of crime, declared that he had observed it that very afternoon, dangling from one end of Mr. Etheridge's watch-chain where it had been used to fasten temporarily a broken link.
"As we go to press we hear that Judge Ostrander has been prostrated by this blow. The deceased had been playing chess up at his house, and in taking the short cut home had met with his death.
"Long Bridge should be provided with lights. It is a dangerous place for foot passengers on a dark night."
A later paragraph.
"The detectives were busy this morning, going over the whole ground in the vicinity of the bridge.
"They were rewarded by two important discoveries. The impression of a foot in a certain soft place halfway up the bluff; and a small heap of fresh earth nearby which, on being dug into, revealed the watch of the murdered man. The broken chain lay with it.
"The footprint has been measured. It coincides exactly with the shoe worn that night by the suspect.
"The case will be laid before the Grand Jury next week."
"The prisoner continues to deny his guilt. The story he gives out is to the effect that he left the tavern some few minutes before seven o'clock, to look for his child who had wandered into the ravine. That he entered the woods from the road running by his house, and was searching the bushes skirting the stream when he heard little Reuther's shout from somewhere up on the bluff. He had his stick with him, for he never went out without it, but, finding it in his way, he leaned it against a tree and went plunging up the bluff without it. Why he didn't call out the child's name he doesn't know; he guessed he thought he would surprise her; and why, when he got to the top of the bluff and didn't find her, he should turn about for his stick instead of hunting for her on the road, he also fails to explain, saying again, he doesn't know. What circumstances force him to tell and what he declares to be true is this: That instead of going back diagonally through the woods to the lone chestnut where he had left his stick, he crossed the bridge and took the path running along the edge of the ravine: That in doing this he came upon the body of a man in the black recesses of the Hollow, a man so evidently beyond all help that he would have hurried by without a second look if it had not been for the watch he saw lying on the ground close to the dead man's side. It was a very fine watch, and it seemed like tempting Providence to leave it lying there exposed to the view of any chance tramp who might come along. It seemed better for him to take it into his own charge till he found some responsible person willing to carry it to Police Headquarters. So, without stopping to consider what the consequences might be to himself, he tore it away by the chain from the hold it had on the dead man's coat and put it in his pocket. He also took some other little things; after which he fled away into town, where the sight of a saloon was too much for him and he went in to have a drink to take the horrors out of him. Since then, the detectives have followed all his movements and know just how much liquor he drank and to whom, in tipsy bravado, he showed the contents of his pockets. But he wasn't so far gone as not to have moments of apprehension when he thought of the dead man lying with his feet in Dark Hollow, and of the hue and cry which would soon be raised, and what folks might think if that accursed watch he had taken so innocently should be found in his pocket. Finally his fears overcame his scruples, and, starting for home, he stopped at the bluff, meaning to run down over the bridge and drop the watch as near as possible to the spot where he had found it. But as he turned to descend, he heard a team approaching from the other side and, terrified still more, he dashed into the woods, and, tearing up the ground with his hands, buried his booty in the loose soil, and made for home. Even then he had no intention of appropriating the watch, only of safe-guarding himself, nor did he have any hand at all in the murder of Mr. Etheridge. This he would swear to; also, to the leaving of the stick where he said.
"It is understood that in case of his indictment, his lawyer will follow the line of defence thus indicated."
"To-day, John Scoville was taken to the tree where he insists he left his stick. It is a big chestnut some hundred and fifty feet beyond the point where the ravine turns west. It has a big enough trunk for a stick to stand upright against it, as was shown by Inspector Snow who had charge of this affair. But we are told that after demonstrating this fact with the same bludgeon which had done its bloody work in the Hollow, the prisoner showed a sudden interest in this weapon and begged to see it closer. This being granted, he pointed out where a splinter or two had been freshly whittled from the handle, and declared that no knife had touched it while it remained in his hands. But, as he had no evidence to support this statement (a knife having been found amongst the other effects taken from his pocket at the time of his arrest), the impression made by this declaration is not likely to go far towards influencing public opinion in his favour.
"A true bill was found to-day against John Scoville for the murder of Algernon Etheridge."
A third clipping:
"We feel it our duty, as the one independent paper of this city, to insist upon the right of a man to the consideration of the public till a jury of his peers has pronounced upon his guilt and thus rendered him a criminal before the law. The way our hitherto sufficiently respected citizen, John Scoville, has been maligned and his every fault and failing magnified for the delectation of a greedy public is unworthy of a Christian community. No man saw him kill Algernon Etheridge, and he himself denies most strenuously that he did so, yet from the first moment of his arrest till now, not a voice has been raised in his favour, or the least account taken of his defence. Yet he is the husband of an estimable wife and the father of a child of such exceptional loveliness that she has been the petted darling of high and low ever since John Scoville became the proprietor of Claymore Tavern.
"Give the man a chance. It is our wish to see justice vindicated and the guilty punished; but not before the jury has pronounced its verdict."
"The Star was his only friend," sighed Deborah Scoville, as she laid this clipping aside and took up another headed by a picture of her husband. This picture she subjected to the same scrutiny she had just given to her own reflection in the glass: "Seeing him anew," as she said to herself, "after all these years of determined forgetfulness."