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them as the sounds played tricks on him in the hills. Two of the Broadfoot girls had seen the men and the dogs pass through their cotton patch. The barking had scared them nearly to death. They didn't know it was dogs; thought it was some sort of varmints.

Then the chase bore so far away that only the flimsiest rumours drifted in: Peck was fighting the officers; he was not fighting the officers; he had begged something to eat at a Negro's shack; up on Harrican creek he had robbed an old man of his mule; he was making for the old John A. Murrell cave where, long before the Civil War, that noted desperado hid his stolen horses and Negroes before running them south to Louisiana. Everyone agreed that if Peck ever got into the Murrell cave, the officers would never get him out, it was so intricate and maze-like.

Three days later, Squire Meredith received a telephone message from Sheriff Bascom to get ready to hold Peck Bradley's trial at twelve o'clock, Saturday, that Peck was captured.

In the meantime sentiment in Irontown was being formed. On the morning after the shooting Mrs. Roxie Biggers paid a sort of visit of inspection to the Scovell House to see that Tug Beavers had what he needed. He had not. He lacked nightshirts. Now Tug had never worn a nightshirt in his life, but Mrs. Biggers held them indispensable to the recovery of health, so she would attend to it. She also found Tug's room unsanitary. It had a western exposure; the afternoon sun heated it up like a furnace and the bed was full of bugs. This was a great surprise to Abner; he had not seen any. Mrs. Biggers, so the village gossip reported, "laid into Miss Scovell about the room and gave her a piece of her mind." Then Mrs. Biggers started conscripting nightshirts; and while she was at it she seized enough for Tug and her husband, too. Mrs. Biggers never gave anything to charity herself except her services, but these services were dynamic.