Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 August 1876 — The Story of Three Rusty Nalls. [ARTICLE]

The Story of Three Rusty Nalls.

At a proper morning hour for respectable people to be seen abroad a man about thirty summers old was observed pawing over a. dirt heap near the Essex Market building. The boys anxiously inquired if he had Tost the ring out of his nose or the stone out of his diamond pin, and he gruffly replied: “ B’yes; I shall have to hurt some of you if you don’t go to keeping away from me.” They saw him pick up three eightpenny nails, bent and rusty, and he slipped them into his vest pocket and sauntered leisurely along to the market. The motherly proprietor of an eating stand has just got her table spread with all the luxuries of the season, and as soon as she saw the stranger she beckoned him to come nearer. “ Breakfast, eh ?” she queried. “Well, sit right down. You have come to the best stand on this market. I assure you that I can give you a better meal for the money than any other lady in North America.”

It didn't take him long to sit down. He dropped into a chair as if he had on a jacket stuffed with bars of lead, and he fell to eating just as naturally as if lie had enjoyed three square meals perday all his life. He didn’t have much to say, but sat there and rattled knife and fork against his teeth and gulped down provisions as if he had walked all the way from the Big Horn country. “ And now don’t fail to try my custard pie,” she observed, as she handed him over a pie. “If there is any one special thing I brag on it is my eustard pies.” While she was putting more coal under the coffee-pot the stranger might have been seen, feeling in his vest pocket. Perhaps he was after a tooth-pick —perhaps he wanted to see if his ten dollar bill was safe.

“Yes; looks like a veiy healthy pie,” said he, as he poised his knife and fork. “I’ve had a great fondness for custard pie ever since I was an innocent child. This particular pie looks ” He stopped there.' For some reason the knife would not go down to the lower crust, and custard pie ought to cut as slick as grease, but this one wouldn’t. The man sawed away, rose up and sawed again, and as the woman wondered what on earth was the matter, lie dipped in his fork and raised a rusty nail on a line with her eyes. “My stars!” she gasped, as she took the nail in her trembling fingers. “I should think so,” he grimly replied. “Let’s investigate a little further.” A second nail came up on the tines of the fork, and the woman whispered: “How on earth did they get there?” “Yes, just so,” he replied, going down for the third nail. The tlirec nails were laid in a row on the table between them, and, clearing his throat, the man scowled fiercely at the embarrassed female, and said: “Woman, never was there a more dastardly attempt to take human life!” “I —I—!” she'stammered. “Would-be murderess, keep silence!” he interrupted. “ Was it your fiendish plan to Spike my breakfast to my lungs, or did you anticipate that I would get one of those nails crossways of my thorax ?’ ’ “May Heaven forgive me; but such a thing never happened before,” she whispered. “Do you know, arch traitoress,” he continued, “ that when a rusty nail comes in contact with custard pie the pie is at once transformed from a healthy dessert to a virulent poison? Oh! of course you know it. The plot was to poison me and get possession of my funds!” “ So help me Heaven! I never dreamed of such a thing!” she replied. “How them nails got there I don’t know, but such a thing never happened before. There isn’t a more tidy stand on this market.” “ I have no time to halt until a legal investigation can be made,” he said, as he wiped off his chin. “It may be a mistake ; perhaps I could put you in prison for life. You may feel grateful that lam the good-hearted man I am.” She didn’t ask any pay and he moved on. It was half an hour before a policeman came along and heard her story and posted the man as a fraud. She hurried down the market with a brickbat in one hand and a big fork inthe other, and was last seen falling over a baby cart on the sidewalk.— N. T. Herald.