“’Ruggam had been given some repair work to do near the outer prison-gate.  It was opened to admit a tradesman’s automobile.  As Guard Lambwell turned to close the gate, Ruggam felled him with his shovel.  He escaped to the adjacent railroad-yards, stole a corduroy coat and pair of blue overalls hanging in a switchman’s shanty and caught the twelve-forty freight up Green River.’”

Stewart had paused.  The editor scribbled frantically.  In a few words aside he explained to us what Stewart was sending.  Then he ordered the latter to proceed.

“’Freight Number Eight was stopped by telegraph near Norwall.  The fugitive, assuming correctly that it was slowing down for search, was seen by a brakeman fleeing across a pasture between the tracks and the eastern edge of Haystack Mountain.  Several posses have already started after him, and sheriffs all through northern New England are being notified.

“’Christopher Wiley, lumber magnate and brother of Ruggam’s former victim, on being told of the escape, has offered a reward of five thousand dollars for Ruggam’s capture, dead or alive.  Guard Lambwell was removed to a hospital, where he died at one-thirty’.... All right?”

The connection was broken, and the editor removed the headpiece.  He began giving orders.  We were twenty minutes behind usual time with the papers, but we made all the trains.

When the big Duplex was grinding out newsprint with a roar that shook the building, the boys and girls gathered around to discuss the thing which had happened.

The Higgins boy, saucer-eyed over the experience of being “on the inside” during the handling of the first sizable news-story since he had become our local reporter, voiced the interrogation on the faces of other office newcomers.

“Ruggam,” the editor explained, “is a poor unfortunate who should have been sent to an asylum instead of the penitentiary.  He killed Mart Wiley, a deputy sheriff, at a Lost Nation kitchen-dance two years ago.”

“Where’s the Lost Nation?”

“It’s a term applied to most of the town of Partridgeville in the northern part of the county—­an inaccessible district back in the mountains peopled with gone-to-seed stock and half-civilized illiterates who only get into the news when they load up with squirrel whisky and start a programme of progressive hell.  Ruggam was the local blacksmith.”

“What’s a kitchen-dance?”

“Ordinarily a kitchen-dance is harmless enough.  But the Lost Nation folks use it as an excuse for a debauch.  They gather in some sizable shack, set the stove out into the yard, soak themselves in aromatic spirits of deviltry and dance from Saturday night until Monday noon——­”

“And this Ruggam killed a sheriff at one of them?”

“He got into a brawl with another chap about his wife.  Someone passing saw the fight and sent for an officer.  Mart Wiley was deputy, afraid of neither man, God nor devil.  Martin had grown disgusted over the petty crime at these kitchen-dances and started out to clean up this one right.  Hap Ruggam killed him.  He must have had help, because he first got Mart tied to a tree in the yard.  Most of the crowd was pie-eyed by this time, anyhow, and would fight at the drop of a hat.  After tying him securely, Ruggam caught up a billet of wood and—­and killed him with that.”