Jasper County Democrat, Volume 11, Number 78, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1909 — The Town Fool. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Town Fool.

By M. QUAD.

[Copyright, 1008, by T. C. McClure.]

It was a brutal way of putting it, but everybody in the town of Graham bad come to speak of Jimmy Landon as the town fool. It was said that the boy bad been bom bright enough, but at the age of five a stroke of lightning bad worked the change in him. He lost the power of speech, and his mind was weakened, and after the death of bis widowed mother he was an Inmate of the poorhouse for two or three years. Then he became a hanger-on of the town, having no particular home, but being cared for as an object of charity. Not quite that either. He was always willing to do any work he could to pay his way. He could hear if h? could not talk, and, though he seemed to bgve no more mind than a child of three,' he got along very well. Two things the boys of the town came to learn in time—Jimmy had a streak of cunning in him, and he was revengeful. ‘ Jimmy Landon was thirteen years old and had been looked upon as the town fool for several years when a sort of event happened in the quiet community. A stranger, who called himself Colonel Bliss and who was so crippled up with wounds that he had to use a pair of crutches, arrived in town and delivered a series of lectures on war. It came to be understood that he had been the colonel of a gallant Illinois regiment and that owing to his wounds and other misfortunes he was in bad financial shape. He did fairly well with his lectures, and he made many frieuds, and when he proposed to open a singing and writing school he received much encouragement. He could sing, and he wrote a beautiful hand. The colonel took up his quarters at one of the two inns in the town, where he had the use of the hall used for

dancing. He could have had the best room in the house, but he did not want it. He wanted one with a back instead of jk front view. Jnst beneath his windows was the roof of the kitchen, and below that was the roof of a shed. From thence it was a drop of only six feet to the alley in the rear of the hotel. These things were mot taken notice of by outsiders until later on. The town fool took a liking to Colonel Bliss at once. He was drawn toward him by his crippled condition. The lad had never seen anything like it in his life. The colonel could manage to get up and down stairs, but no more. If he left, the hotel it had be be in a carriage. Jimmy Landon started out to attach himself to the stranger as a body servant, but his unusual curiosity brought about his downfall. He had served for two weeks wtyen the colonel found him rummaging his trunk and sent him to the right about. Not only that but he whacked him over the back with one of his crutches. Those whacks destroyed the boy’s illusions. The colonel was no longer a god to him. Jimmy had reasoned it out in his silly mind that the trunk was a partnership concern and that he had a perfect right to examine its contents, and to be whacked for doing it and then to be driven away in disgrace aroused a thirst for revenge. '

The schools bad just got fairly started when more events came along. One night the postofflee was robbed of cash and stamps to the value of S2OO. It was a widow who held the office, and everybody felt sorry for her. It was decided that the trick had been done by two men who were seen loafing abont the streets at a late hour that night, and the sheriff failed to get any clew. The colonel heard of the robbery, of course, and seemed to take a deep interest in it. In fact, his advice was taken by the sheriff in seeking to solve the affair. Only ten days later the leading dry goods store was entered at night and S7O In cash taken. As no goods were taken, the sheriff reasoned that some one in the town was the robber, but the colonel differed with him. In his opinion an organized gang was at work and the fellows had been frightened away before they could begin loading up their wagon. During the next week there waa

nothing doing. Then a farmer who bad sold a lot of cattle and had the money in his bouse was neatly robbed of -'very dollar of it He and his wife were sleeping in a bedroom off the sitting room, and the robber had effected entrance by using a ladder and a second story window. The sum taken was S3OO, and now the sheriff and his deputies began to move lively. By the advice of Colonel Bliss, w;ho hinted that he might add a detective agency to his schools, certain highways were watched at night. Nothing came of that, but the postofflee in a village in a contrary direction was robbed of SIOO worth of cash and stamps. The fool could hear, and he heard all. about the robberies. He couldn’t grasp the particulars the way other folks did. but he absorbed enough of them to make him act queerly. He went about with a grin on his face, and when spoken to about the robberies he put on the most knowing look his face had ever worn. The sheriff bought the lad 10 cents’ worth of candy and tried for an hour to get something out of him, but Jimmy simply munched the sweets and grinned. If he had anything up his sleeve he wasn’t going to bring it to light just then. The robbery of the farmer was still being talked of when a hardware store in the town was entered and robbed. In addition to $25 in cash, the robber bundled up S2OO worth of the choicest cutlery. There was no clew until Colonel Bliss furnished one. He directed suspicion toward the town fool. Jimmy Landon was brought to the hotel by the sheriff, and the colonel and others set all sorts of traps for him, but were no wiser at the end of three hours. The boy would grip and giggle and lie down on the floor and laugh, but no one else could see where the joke came in—if there was a Joke. For two weeks after the robbery of the hardware store there was nothing doing. The colonel held to it that the boy, fool though he was, had become frightened. Then the grand climax came, and it was a hair raiser. There was a private bank in town, and the owner had quietly put on a watchman. One night this watchman heard suspicious sounds at the back door and raised an alarm and heard some one running away. Fifteen minutes later there was the awfulest kind of a row in the rear of the hotel. None of those who rushed out were prepared for the sights that greeted them. Colonel Bliss, without his crutches, had been caught by A leg in a bear trap, the town fool was rolling on the ground in laughter, a man’s trail over the roofs could be traced in the thin snow, and there were tracks leading from the trap back to the bank. Jimmy Landon had suspected the man that whacked him with a crutch and set a trap for and caught him. There was no getting out of it for the colonel. First, it was shown that he was no more a cripple than, any one else, and, second, the plunder of his various robberies was right there in his trunk. He simply stood on his dignity and went to prison for ten years, and the town fool is still today welcome to make his home with any family in the community. The doctors say that his mind will never be any brighter, and other folks say there is no need for it to be.

HAD BEEN CAUGHT BY A LEG IN A BEAR TRAP.