The Green Forest tribune., 1909-11-12
The Story of a Crime
By FRANCES KEATON
Copyright by Short Stories Co, Ltd)

cry-shrill, appealing-the cry of a child in terror,
 Every man looked into the whitened face of his neighbor as his hand sought his hip pocket. The little voice cried within the closed house. One | burly fellow set his shoulder to the door, and sent it in, splintered. All looked.
 Before them was the back door, shattered; in this jagged frame stood small black boy. He had clung to the back of a buggy on the way out, and run to the rear of the house when he saw the front door whole. Now his hands covered his eyes, his pierc- ing voice filled their ears.
 On the floor, by the cold hearth, lay Foster Black, stone dead, marks of fingers on his throat. No sign of struggle was in the room. He must have fallen without defense, as Jerry said, in the vision his knees wouldn't hole him up.'
 | The little black boy was comforted, and the living men stood silent around Foster, who lay in the long silence of death.
 Foster was known to have had good crops He always hid his money about the house. Jerry was to be married and wanted money for house, as, in- deed, the poor, happy fellow had con- | fided to everyone he knew, in turn. He had arrived in town in a pitiable state some hours after the time he had said the murder was done. Evi- dently he had stayed in the woods to make a story to tell Evidently he had been tempted by the money. 1 Ugly murmurs arose. Passionate, | thick voices muttered the black guilt around Fosters body lying cold on the cold hearth
 Someone-it was never known who said, Lynch him!" Their outraged blood leaped in consent, but, lacking leader, they paused in a choked quiet, full of portent The little black boy spoke, "He put | ten on he shoes sence."
 How do you know that, Mark?" they asked him with one voice. He foot-ma'ks in de ya'd, outen back"
 The men pressed out of the broken door. On the bare earth, still soft enough from the previous days rain to take a footprint, were the marks of the bare feet Jerry had claimed to hear "padpadding around de house."
 The youngest physician bent over them. That foot was never Jerry's; it's too short" he said | Someone laughed incredulity. But the sheriff said, "Wimberly has an ole dog" and started forthwith for the bloodhound.
 The old gaunt-eyed creature was fetched in wagon and held in leash, | led up the path where so many feet had trod and in to the sprawled body. Very carefully he stalked and sniffed, and at the back step he threw up his head in a long howl. The scent lay in the half-dry earth. With his nose dropped once more to the foot-marks the dog started.
 The older men remained by the body, the younger men followed.
 The dog went over the hill, through the peach orchard, down through the standing fodder corn, and out across the cotton field to the edge of the pine woods, where a little shack stood, as though withdrawing from the field, ruinous and overgrown with jackbeans hanging in thick clusters of purple flowers. There the dog clamored at the door, furious in his baf1led rage. Four men held him. The door was opened. Within, on the floor, for the shack was empty, grinning at them and driveling lit tie at the mouth, sat red-bearded man, very plainly mad. The dog without yelled and strug- gled, trying to reach his quarry; the man paid no heed, but sat smiling and picking at the edge of his coat. When they took him to town, bound, news had already come, by telegraph, of his escape from confinement in the southern part of the state.
 But Jerry was changed. Since he had experienced a death-bed sending all the earth and air were full of spir- itual life.