Unc' Henry was left to guard the ruins, lest some stray spark should be
blown toward the other buildings. "Dis yere ole niggah wa'n't mistaken
aftah all," he muttered. "Dee was somebody prowlin' 'roun' de premises
yistiddy evenin'." Then he searched the ground, all around the cabin,
for footprints in the snow. He found some tracks presently, and followed
them over the meadow in the starlight, across the road, and down the
railroad track several rods. There they suddenly disappeared. The tramp
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.
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