Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 December 1894 — HAD MET BEFORE. [ARTICLE]

HAD MET BEFORE.

But in Circumstances Not Condu* cive to Recognition. The drummer had for some time been watching a flashy-looking city crook playing a game of cards with a man on the sleeper, who might have been a farmer, and then again who might have been something else. All of a sudden, as the train pulled up at a station, the sharper made a wild break and rushed out of the car and off the platform, leaving everything. The other man simply smiled, and looked over at the drummer. “What the mischief was the matter with that party?” asked the drummer, taking a seat with the smiler. “There’s a story goes with that,” replied the smiler quietly. “Want to hear It?” “Indeed, I do.” “Here she goes, then. About five years ago I had some cattle to deliver in Chicago, and when I got there I stopped out by the stock yards in a hotel I found convenient. It wasn’t in a very good neighborhood, but I wasn’t looking for society fixings, so I didn’t care much. I had some money and a fine watch, and once or twice during the evening, as I sat around the barroom, I noticed I was being watched by several of the loafers about the place. When I went up to my room I locked the door and bolted it and took a look out of the window to see what was outside. I found it opened out onto a sort of shed about eight feet below, and that ran down within climbing distance of the ground. I took this observation so as to know where I was going to be at in case of a fire. Then I went to bed, leaving the window up, as it was a hot night. “I don’t know how long it was after I had been asleep that some one awakened me. At first I thought I was dreaming, but just as I tried to go to sleep again I heard the noise once more, and this time I didn’t try to go to sleep. I got up and went over toward the window with a sixinch knife in my hand that I thought would come handy in case I found at the window what I thought I would. It was quite dark on that side of the house, and when I got up close I could hear two men whispering on the shed roof. I listened and heard one tell the other to stoop down and he would climb on his shoulders and from there pull himself up to my window. By this time I was standing by the window ready to meet my visitor as soon as he came. While I was thinking whether to kill him or not, I saw his fingers slide up over the window sill seeking for a good grip. Then they stretched down tight as if the man were testing his strength for the final pull. At this moment I reached forward, and with a swish I whacked two of those fingers off with my knife. I kept very quiet about it too, but my visitors didn’t, and they rolled and tumbled oft that roof in a manner worth coming all that way to see. Then I wont back to bed, but I fastened down the window. Next morning when I got up, which was just at daybreak, for I had my cattle to look after, I went to the window to see what was left of the wreck, and I saw two fingers on the sill. The owner had forgotten them in his hurry the night before, and it struck me then for the first time that I ought to take charge of them, so that if they were ever called for I could return them. “Well, I took them along with me, and as soon as I could get into a drug store I got a bottle filled with spirits and put them into it. Until to-day I have not been able to find anybody that I thought might want them, although I have carried them ever since when I go anywhere, and while that duffer you saw trying to work me first shuffled his cards I noticed that he was short two fingers. About the time he thought he had me I pulled the bottle out of my pocket, and, sticking it right at him, I asked him if he didn’t think he had better see if he couldn’t fit them on to the stumps he had. It took him about a minute to catch on, but when he did, well, you know the rest. I guess he must have been the chap that tried to climb in my window that night,” and as the man smiled the drummer wondered how it was "that truth was oftentimes stranger than fiction, and handed the bottle, with its two ghastly and silent witnesses, back to the owner.—[Detroit Free Press.