Page:O'Higgins--From the life.djvu/160

 The sheriff ordered: "Here! See that stone? Turn it over."

He got no answer.

"Here, you!" he said. "Look-a-here!" and took him by the shoulder.

He found the man trembling hysterically under his hand, and he cried, "What! What the hell?" looking at Murdock.

Murdock made a vague, unhappy, pitiful gesture, turning away.

The sheriff strode up to the stone and rolled it over. It covered the mouth of a rabbit-burrow and the shining butt-plate of a shot-gun that had been forced into the hole. There was a moment of deadly silence. Then the maniac, falling on his knees before the sumac, made the motions of washing his hands in the reddened foliage. "Blood!" he said, hoarsely. "Blood! He killed Roseyvelt!"

He made no attempt to escape. He let the sheriff take him back to the farm-house, hitch up a team, and drive him to the county jail. To all their questions he only mumbled, "He killed Roseyvelt!"

It came out at his trial that in the middle of corn-husking he had heard that Roosevelt was alive. He had wanted to leave at once on his pilgrimage to Oyster Bay. Old Murdock had said: "Alive nuthin'. I killed him myself. His body's hid in the attic over your bedroom." And, haunted insanely by