“Ez I was sayin’, Tom Buttonporgie stood six feet two in his stockin’s an’ was a most powerful man, fer walkin’ day after day, luggin’ a great pack on his back, hed give him the muscles of an ox. He used to come to this walley oncet every summer so he knowd well o’ Si Berrybush, who was the desperatest man ever seen in these parts. Si’s ockypation was robbin’. He made his headquarters in the mo’ntain acrosst the river. His hand was agin everybody an’ everybody knowd it, yit he never was catched. Oncet a pedler was found dead in the bushes with a bullet hole in his head an’ his pack turned inside out. They sayd Berrybush did it, so he went down to the Sheriff’s an’ give himself up. They was no evydence an’ he walked home agin. A couple o’ times things like that happened an’ yit they was never an ioty o’ proof. He’d ’a’ died a nat’ral death, I guess, ef he hedn’t forgot himself one night in the willage an’ shot Joe Hyde. They was too many fellys handy who hed grudges agin him to let him git away, an’ they clapped him in jail, tried him an’ sentenced him to be hung.
“Now, about this time, Tom Buttonporgie come over the mo’ntain inter the walley. Late in the afternoon he reached Ben Clock’s place near Eden, an’ ez they knowd him well they ast him to spend the night. After supper the family hed a game o’ cards an’ about nine o’clock Tom tuk up his pack an’ started fer the barn where he was to sleep, fer the house was full. Clock lighted the way with a lantern an’ saw him comfortable fixed. The pack was stowed away in a corner o’ the barn-floor, while the pedler was settled nice ez ye please on a horse-blanket in the hay-mow.
“Tom Buttonporgie slept sound an’ hard. Everything in this world was pleasant fer him. Things was goin’ his way. It’s strange that it should be so, boys, but yit it is true that sleep comes easiest an’ quickest to them ez hes nawthin’ but good things to forget in it. So from the time he laid his head down on the hay till a kick awoke him, Tom knowd nawthin’. He opened his eyes with a jerk an’ set up an’ rubbed ’em. The airly mornin’ light was jest creepin’ inter the barn, but he could make out only a small, dark figure a few feet away.
“‘Good morning, Mr. Clock,’ sais he wery pleasant, tho’ he was a leetle put out at the rough way he’d ben woke.