CHAPTER 56

A Question of Law

THE slaughter-house is gone from the mouth of Bear Creek and so is the

small jail (or 'calaboose') which once stood in its neighborhood. A

citizen asked, 'Do you remember when Jimmy Finn, the town drunkard, was

burned to death in the calaboose?'

Observe, now, how history becomes defiled, through lapse of time and

the help of the bad memories of men. Jimmy Finn was not burned in the

calaboose, but died a natural death in a tan vat, of a combination of

delirium tremens and spontaneous combustion. When I say natural death, I

mean it was a natural death for Jimmy Finn to die. The calaboose victim

was not a citizen; he was a poor stranger, a harmless whiskey-sodden

tramp. I know more about his case than anybody else; I knew too much

of it, in that bygone day, to relish speaking of it. That tramp was

wandering about the streets one chilly evening, with a pipe in his

mouth, and begging for a match; he got neither matches nor courtesy; on

the contrary, a troop of bad little boys followed him around and amused

themselves with nagging and annoying him. I assisted; but at last, some

appeal which the wayfarer made for forbearance, accompanying it with a

pathetic reference to his forlorn and friendless condition, touched such

sense of shame and remnant of right feeling as were left in me, and I

went away and got him some matches, and then hied me home and to bed,

heavily weighted as to conscience, and unbuoyant in spirit. An hour or

two afterward, the man was arrested and locked up in the calaboose by

the marshal--large name for a constable, but that was his title. At two

in the morning, the church bells rang for fire, and everybody turned

out, of course--I with the rest. The tramp had used his matches

disastrously: he had set his straw bed on fire, and the oaken sheathing

of the room had caught. When I reached the ground, two hundred men,

women, and children stood massed together, transfixed with horror, and

staring at the grated windows of the jail. Behind the iron bars, and

tugging frantically at them, and screaming for help, stood the tramp; he

seemed like a black object set against a sun, so white and intense was

the light at his back. That marshal could not be found, and he had the

only key. A battering-ram was quickly improvised, and the thunder of its

blows upon the door had so encouraging a sound that the spectators broke

into wild cheering, and believed the merciful battle won. But it was not

so. The timbers were too strong; they did not yield. It was said that

the man's death-grip still held fast to the bars after he was dead; and

that in this position the fires wrapped him about and consumed him. As

to this, I do not know. What was seen after I recognized the face that

was pleading through the bars was seen by others, not by me.

I saw that face, so situated, every night for a long time afterward; and

I believed myself as guilty of the man's death as if I had given him the

matches purposely that he might burn himself up with them. I had not a

doubt that I should be hanged if my connection with this tragedy were

found out. The happenings and the impressions of that time are burnt

into my memory, and the study of them entertains me as much now as they

themselves distressed me then. If anybody spoke of that grisly matter,

I was all ears in a moment, and alert to hear what might be said, for I

was always dreading and expecting to find out that I was suspected; and

so fine and so delicate was the perception of my guilty conscience,

that it often detected suspicion in the most purposeless remarks, and in

looks, gestures, glances of the eye which had no significance, but which

sent me shivering away in a panic of fright, just the same. And how sick

it made me when somebody dropped, howsoever carelessly and barren of

intent, the remark that 'murder will out!' For a boy of ten years, I was

carrying a pretty weighty cargo.

All this time I was blessedly forgetting one thing--the fact that I was

an inveterate talker in my sleep. But one night I awoke and found my

bed-mate--my younger brother--sitting up in bed and contemplating me by

the light of the moon. I said--

'What is the matter?'

'You talk so much I can't sleep.'

I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throat

and my hair on end.

'What did I say. Quick--out with it--what did I say?'

'Nothing much.'

'It's a lie--you know everything.'

'Everything about what?'

'You know well enough. About _that_.'

'About _what_?--I don't know what you are talking about. I think you are

sick or crazy or something. But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to

sleep while I've got a chance.'

He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning this new terror

over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind. The burden of

my thought was, How much did I divulge? How much does he know?--what a

distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea--I would

wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook him

up, and said--

'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--'

'This is foolish--I never get drunk.'

'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man. Suppose a _man _should come

to you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you

forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--'

'How could you load a tomahawk?'

'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said

the pistol. Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is

serious. There's been a man killed.'

'What! in this town?'

'Yes, in this town.'

'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.'

'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it,

because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that

pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident,

being drunk. Well, would it be murder?'

'No--suicide.'

'No, no. I don't mean _his _act, I mean yours: would you be a murderer

for letting him have that pistol?'

After deep thought came this answer--

'Well, I should think I was guilty of something--maybe murder--yes,

probably murder, but I don't quite know.'

This made me very uncomfortable. However, it was not a decisive verdict.

I should have to set out the real case--there seemed to be no other

way. But I would do it cautiously, and keep a watch out for suspicious

effects. I said--

'I was supposing a case, but I am coming to the real one now. Do you

know how the man came to be burned up in the calaboose?'

'No.'

'Haven't you the least idea?'

'Not the least.'

'Wish you may die in your tracks if you have?'

'Yes, wish I may die in my tracks.'

'Well, the way of it was this. The man wanted some matches to light his

pipe. A boy got him some. The man set fire to the calaboose with those

very matches, and burnt himself up.'

'Is that so?'

'Yes, it is. Now, is that boy a murderer, do you think?'

'Let me see. The man was drunk?'

'Yes, he was drunk.'

'Very drunk?'

'Yes.'

'And the boy knew it?'

'Yes, he knew it.'

There was a long pause. Then came this heavy verdict--

'If the man was drunk, and the boy knew it, the boy murdered that man.

This is certain.'

Faint, sickening sensations crept along all the fibers of my body, and

I seemed to know how a person feels who hears his death sentence

pronounced from the bench. I waited to hear what my brother would say

next. I believed I knew what it would be, and I was right. He said--

'I know the boy.'

I had nothing to say; so I said nothing. I simply shuddered. Then he

added--

'Yes, before you got half through telling about the thing, I knew

perfectly well who the boy was; it was Ben Coontz!'

I came out of my collapse as one who rises from the dead. I said, with

admiration--

'Why, how in the world did you ever guess it?'

'You told it in your sleep.'

I said to myself, 'How splendid that is! This is a habit which must be

cultivated.'

My brother rattled innocently on--

'When you were talking in your sleep, you kept mumbling something about

“matches,” which I couldn't make anything out of; but just now, when

you began to tell me about the man and the calaboose and the matches,

I remembered that in your sleep you mentioned Ben Coontz two or three

times; so I put this and that together, you see, and right away I knew

it was Ben that burnt that man up.'

I praised his sagacity effusively. Presently he asked--

'Are you going to give him up to the law?'

'No,' I said; 'I believe that this will be a lesson to him. I shall keep

an eye on him, of course, for that is but right; but if he stops where

he is and reforms, it shall never be said that I betrayed him.'

'How good you are!'

'Well, I try to be. It is all a person can do in a world like this.'

And now, my burden being shifted to other shoulders, my terrors soon

faded away.

The day before we left Hannibal, a curious thing fell under my

notice--the surprising spread which longitudinal time undergoes there.

I learned it from one of the most unostentatious of men--the colored

coachman of a friend of mine, who lives three miles from town. He was

to call for me at the Park Hotel at 7.30 P.M., and drive me out. But he

missed it considerably--did not arrive till ten. He excused himself by

saying--

'De time is mos' an hour en a half slower in de country en what it is in

de town; you'll be in plenty time, boss. Sometimes we shoves out early

for church, Sunday, en fetches up dah right plum in de middle er de

sermon. Diffunce in de time. A body can't make no calculations 'bout

it.'

I had lost two hours and a half; but I had learned a fact worth four.