The Hays free press. [volume] (Hays, Kan.) 1908-1924, 1917-02-10
The Tragedy of Thos. Hearne
CONTINUED from Saae p

AOOftt6tAC0 P09~ -
assistance or had any questions of
real Importance.
That was all; but it was enough for
me. Here was a scheme into which
I could put my heart. There was
no low-down swindling, no dirty work
about it. l felt as gay as schoolboy
off for a holiday.
And so in three days time that
ragged rascal Jack Henderson disap-
peared from London, and the we'll
dressed Mr.. Abel Kingsley, vaguely
described In the visitors book of the
Princetown Arms as of Memphis
University, U. S. A, was sitting on
the cairn hill above the prison that
held julius Craig.
To the far horizon there stretched
the melancholy moors, deserted washes
of rush marshes and stunted heather,
broken here and there by outcrops of
granite, that crowned the rolling ground
like the ruins Of a hundred feudal
castles. For Dartmoor Is a huge granite
lakeland, and on its barren surface
no corn viii grow nor tree flourish
Beneath the rampant of its contain
ing hills lies the garden of Devon,
a land of orchards and pleasant woods,
of cornfields and pasture farms; but
the moors have defied the farmer and
remain the same sad wilderness that
prehistoric man inhabited four thou
sand wears ago. You can see where
he built his hut circles, and set up
his great stone avenues to the honor
of dead chieftains.
It was an uncanny sort of place
altogether, and shivered as l sat
In that lonely cemetery of the for
gotten dead.
The huge prison was built on the
opposite slope of the shallow valley,
and the farm which the convicts had
won field by field stretched down
from its walls to a brook at the foot
of the cairn hill where l was. On the
further edge of the brook a gang was
at work inclosing some new ground,
and through my glasses soon made
out the man / was after. The last
time / had seen him was on his own
coach at Ascot, with the girls buzzing
round him ike wasps after sugar, and
there he was digging trenches with
a spade It's funny worldi
About twenty men were in the
gang. On the outer side a couple of
warders strolled up and down with
rifles under their arms. There was
nothing but a low ledge to stop the
eonvicts if they knocked down the
guards with their spades and made
a run for it. But when | looked back
across the wastes of the moor / un-
derstood. In city a man may vanish
in a crowd, but on Dartmoor he must
tramp a dozen miles before he can
find even a bush to hide him. In
clear weather the mounted warders
of the pursuit would ride him down
in half an hour.
The Princetown Arms, gray,
weather-beaten square of granite, was
a pleasant country inn standing near
the center of the village 1t was too
early In the year for tourists. Indeed,
as 1 discovered, there was only one
man beside myself staying in the house,
= Mr. Thomas Hearne, whose address
IN the visitors book was briefly Lon
DON When 1 came down to dinner
that night l found him already seated
at a little table With my knife and
fork laid opposite. / wasn't anxious
to make new acquaintance, but I
couldn't very well ask them to lay
another table for my benefit So
/ took my chair, and wished him good
evening as politely as possible
He was a small, gray-bearded man
Of over sixty, as I reckoned, and he
seemed as disinclined for converse
ton as ever | was. For that / thanked
my luck, and worked through the
5iono- vr1th nv brain bflsv with one