A few days previous, he said, he had chanced to arrest an Irish mechanic
who, during the season, had been employed at the neighboring hotel in
replacing some plaster that had fallen by reason of leakage. Since then,
a hard drinking man, he had been idly loafing, occasionally jobbing,
about the country, but the offence charged was that of being concerned in
a wholesale dynamiting of fish in the Tennessee River some months ago.
The man protested violently against his arrest, being unable to procure
bail, and declared he could prove an alibi but for fear that a worse
thing befall him. This singular statement so stimulated the officer's
curiosity that his craft was enlisted to elicit the whole story. Little
by little he secured its details. It seemed that on the day when the fish
were dynamited contrary to law, the Irishman was some thirty miles
distant from the spot--the day of the Briscoe tragedy. He believed that
he was the last man who had seen Briscoe alive--unless indeed he were
done to death.
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