offered to show who he might be, or where he might have sped, some
fingerprints was took by the police and they got a good picture off an
empty bottle in a cupboard and another off a frying-pan. And so it got to
be understood that 'Santa Claus' was a famous criminal, who had come to
Little Silver straight from seven years of penal servitude for
manslaughter and had a record so long as from Newgate to Prince town. And
he was sixty-three years old, or so they thought.

They traced him back to London and lost him there; but five years
afterwards Hiram Linklater, for that was his famous name, swung in earnest
for murder of a woman in the Peak of Derbyshire. Always for rural
districts he was and a great one for the wonders of nature. He told the
chaplain of his adventures at Little Silver, and expressed penitence afore
he dropped. He also said that nothing in his whole career had given him
more pleasure than to hear how his Christmas Eve effort down in Devonshire
had miscarried after all. And he pointed out how, by the will of God, his
own gift to the little boy had saved him!

And he was said to have made a brave end; which no doubt ain't as
difficult as people imagine.

'Tis the like of Hiram Linklater I reckon, as keep up the sentiment of
approval for capital punishment; because even in the softest head, it must
be granted that a baby-poisoner is the sort that's better under the earth
than on it.




No. II