an arrest. Having murdered his brother -in -law, Orrin Brower of Kentucky was a fugitive from
justice. From the county jail where he had been confined to await his trial, he had escaped
by knocking down his jailer with an iron bar, robbing him of his keys and opening the outer
door, walked out into the night. The jailer was unarmed. Brower got no weapon with which
to defend his recovered liberty. As soon as he was out of the town, he had the folly to
enter a forest. This was many years ago, when that region was wilder than it is now. The
night was pretty dark, with neither moon nor stars visible, and as Brower had never dwelt
thereabout and knew nothing of the lay of the land, he was, naturally, not long in losing
himself. He could not have said if he were getting farther away from the town or going
back to it, a most important matter to Orrin Brower. He knew that in either case a posse
of citizens with a pack of bloodhounds would soon be on his track, and his chance of escape
was very slender. But he did not wish to assist his own pursuit. Even an added hour of freedom
was worth having. Suddenly he emerged from the forest into an open road, and there before
him stood, indistinctively, the figure of a man, motionless in the gloom. It was too
late to retreat. The fugitive felt that at the first movement back towards the wood he
would be, as he afterward explained, filled with buckshot. So the two stood there like
trees, Brower nearly suffocated by the activity of his own heart. The other, the emotions
of the other are not recorded. A moment later, it may have been an hour, the moon sailed
into a patch of unclouded sky, and the hunted man saw that visible embodiment of law lift
an arm and point significantly toward and beyond him. He understood. Turning his back
to his captor, he walked submissively away in the direction indicated, looking to neither
the right nor the left, hardly daring to breathe, his head and back actually aching with a prophecy
of buckshot. Brower was as courageous a criminal as ever lived to be hanged. That was shown
by the conditions of awful personal peril in which he had coolly killed his brother -in -law.
It is needless to relate them here. They came out at his trial, and the revelation of his
calmness in confronting them came near to saving his neck. But what would you have when
a brave man is beaten, he submits. So they pursued their journey jailward along the old
road through the woods. Only once did Brower venture a turn of the head, just once, when
he was in deep shadow and he knew the other was in moonlight, he looked backwards. His
captor was Burton Duff, the jailer, as white as death and bearing upon his brow the livid
mark of the iron bar. Orrin Brower had no further curiosity. Eventually they entered
the town, which was all alights, but deserted, only the women and children remained and they
were off the streets. Straight towards the jail the criminal held his way. Straight up
to the main entrance he walked, laid his hand upon the knob of the heavy iron door, pushed
it open without command, entered and found himself in the presence of a half dozen armed
men. Then he turned. Nobody else entered. On a table in the corridor lay the dead body
of Burton Duff.
