"Hold on," said the judge. "I would not have permitted this statement had I not from the first been interested in its very curiousness. You are not charged with the murder of anyone named Flanders. You found a little boy playing among the flowers in a park and slew him."
The prisoner pressed his hands to his head. "Oh," he cried, "if Flanders be not dead I can not write. He would not deprive me of the fame——"
An officer led him away.
[HENDRICKS KNEW IT.]
Jasper Hendricks, old man Blue, Abe Stallcup, and several other men, farmers in the neighborhood, sat, one rainy day, about the fireplace in a Tennessee crossroads store. Autumn had just begun to enforce its principles—that is, a lingering mildness of atmosphere had just turned cool enough to shiver a little when the sun had sunk behind the distant timber line. The "evangelist" had made his annual fall visit to the neighborhood, and, assisted by local talent, was holding a revival in Round Pound meeting-house.
The party of men in the store had been discussing the main features of the meeting, and in their crude way had been speculating upon religion in general, when old man Blue, a deacon and an ultra-religionist, remarked:
"Wall, gentlemen, it's all right ter talk, but when the ho'n blows, callin' us ter a final settlement, w'y we jest nachully cave; that's all. The bravest man in the world would a leetle ruther stay here, ef he's in his right mind, than ter take the chances in a neighborhood (as a feller named Hamestring or Hamlet, I dunno which, once said) frum which thar ain't nobody returned ter tell us the condition uv the craps an' sich. Now I've a putty strong hope that my after-life will be smooth an' easy, but I'll jest tell you whut's er fack, I'd ruther stay here er leetle longer, even ef I hafter plow with er jumpin' coulter an' break a yoke of calves urcasion'ly, than ter go thar."
"You air right!" Stallcup responded. "At times when we air sorter shoutin' round the mourner's bench we feel like we wouldn't kere ef we wuz called erway at wunst, but airter we git out an' see the sun shine the next day, an' see the birds erhoppin' erround the straw-stack, an' lissen ter the ole jaybird that's dun picked a quarrel with the yallerhammer, w'y we feel sorter like stayin' here a while longer."