CHAPTER IV.

JOHN HENRY'S COUNTRY COP.

Ahead of me, plodding along the pike under the moonlight, were
Bunch and his cadaverous captor, the former bowed in sorrow or
anger, probably both, and the latter with head erect, haughty as a
Roman conqueror.

Bunch's make-up was a troubled dream. Over a pair of hand-me-down
trousers, eight sizes too large for him, he wore a three-dollar
ulster. On his head was an automobile cap, and his face was
covered with a bunch of eelgrass three feet deep. He was surely
all the money.

As I drew near I could hear Mr. Diggs expatiating on crime in
general and housebreaking in particular, and I fancied I could also
hear Bunch boiling and seething within.

[Illustration: Aunt Martha--a Short, Stout Bundle of Good Nature.]

"Mr. Buggular," Diggs was saying, "I don't know just what your home
trainin' was as a child, but they's a screw loose somewhere or
you'd a'never been brought to this here harrowful perdickyment,
nohow. I s'pose you jest started in nat'rally to be a heenyus
maleyfactor early in life, huh? You needn't to answer if you're
afeared it'll incrimigate you, but I s'pose you took to it when a
boy, pickin' pockets or suthin' like that, huh?"