had evidently walked on the rail some distance. If Unc' Henry had gone
quarter of a mile farther up the track, he would have found those same
sliding imprints on every other crosstie, as if the man had taken long
running leaps in his haste to get away.

Jonesy stoutly denied that the man had set fire to the cabin. "We nearly
froze to death that night," he said, when questioned about it afterward,
"and the boss piled on an awful big lot of wood just before he went
to bed."

"Then what made him take to his heels so fast if he didn't?" some one
asked.

"I don't know," answered Jonesy. "He said that luck was always against
him, and maybe he thought nobody would believe him if he did say that he
didn't do it."

Several days after that Malcolm found the tramp's picture in the
_Courier-Journal_. He was a noted criminal who had escaped from a
Northern penitentiary some two months before, and had been arrested by
the Louisville police. There was no mistaking him. That big, ugly scar
branded him on cheek and forehead like another Cain.

"And to think that that terrible man was harboured on my place!"
exclaimed Mrs. MacIntyre when she heard of it. "And you boys were down
there in the cabin with him for hours! Sat beside him and talked with
him! What will your mother say? I feel as if you had been exposed to the
smallpox, and I cannot be too thankful now that the boy who was with him
was not brought here. He isn't a fit companion for you. Not that the
poor little unfortunate is to blame. He cannot help being a child of the