An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was
suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had
obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in
1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it
is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with
his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and
was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This
brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were
not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living,
murder being an acceptable means to that end. It occasionally
occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would
be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and never
could be traced beyond. This was so in the case of "old man Baker,"
as he was always called. (Such names are given in the western
"settlements" only to elderly persons who are not esteemed; to the
general disrepute of social unworth is affixed the special reproach
of age.) A peddler came to his house and none went away--that is
all that anybody knew.

Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well
known in that part of the country, was driving by Baker's farm one
night. It was not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere
above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth. Mr.
Cummings, who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling a
tune, which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of
friendly encouragement to his horse. As he came to a little bridge
across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man standing upon it,