A large, broad-shouldered man sprang forward and
catching the tail of the fleeing man's coat pulled him back into the circle
of light. His fist shot out and caught the small man directly on the mouth.
He fell like a dead thing, face downward in the dust of the road.
Tom ran the car slowly forward and its headlight continued to play over the
three figures. From a little pocket at the side of his driver's seat he
took a revolver. He ran the car quickly to a position near the group in the
road and stopped.
"What's up?" he asked sharply.
Ed Hall the factory superintendent, the man who had struck the blow that
had felled the little man, stepped forward and explained the tragic
happenings of the evening in town. The factory superintendent had
remembered that as a boy he had once worked for a few weeks on the farm of
which the wood beside the road was a part, and that on Sunday afternoons
the harness maker had come to the farm with his wife and the two people had
gone to walk in the very place where he had just been found. "I had a hunch
he would be out here," he boasted. "I figured it out. Crowds started out of
town in all directions, but I cut out alone. Then I happened to see this
fellow and just for company I brought him along." He put up his hand and,
looking at Tom, tapped his forehead. "Cracked," he declared, "he always
was. A fellow I knew saw him once in that woods," he said pointing.
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