“He had not been accused; but he found it impossible to escape after this, and when at the instance of Coroner Haines he was carefully looked over and a small red ribbon found in one of his pockets, he was immediately put under arrest and taken to the city lock-up.  For the ribbon had been identified as well as the stick.  Oliver Ostrander, who had accompanied his father to the scene of crime, declared that he had observed it that very afternoon, dangling from one end of Mr. Etheridge’s watch-chain where it had been used to fasten temporarily a broken link.

“As we go to press we hear that Judge Ostrander has been prostrated by this blow.  The deceased had been playing chess up at his house, and in taking the short cut home had met with his death.

“Long Bridge should be provided with lights.  It is a dangerous place for foot passengers on a dark night.”

A later paragraph.

“The detectives were busy this morning, going over the whole ground in the vicinity of the bridge.

“They were rewarded by two important discoveries.  The impression of a foot in a certain soft place halfway up the bluff; and a small heap of fresh earth nearby which, on being dug into, revealed the watch of the murdered man.  The broken chain lay with it.

“The footprint has been measured.  It coincides exactly with the shoe worn that night by the suspect.

“The case will be laid before the Grand Jury next week.”

“The prisoner continues to deny his guilt.  The story he gives out is to the effect that he left the tavern some few minutes before seven o’clock, to look for his child who had wandered into the ravine.  That he entered the woods from the road running by his house, and was searching the bushes skirting the stream when he heard little Reuther’s shout from somewhere up on the bluff.  He had his stick with him, for he never went out without it, but, finding it in his way, he leaned it against a tree and went plunging up the bluff without it.  Why he didn’t call out the child’s name he doesn’t know; he guessed he thought he would surprise her; and why, when he got to the top of the bluff and didn’t find her, he should turn about for his stick instead of hunting for her on the road, he also fails to explain, saying again, he doesn’t know.  What circumstances force him to tell and what he declares to be true is this:  That instead of going back diagonally through the woods to the lone chestnut where he had left his stick, he crossed the bridge and took the path running along the edge of the ravine:  That in doing this he came upon the body of a man in the black recesses of the Hollow, a man so evidently beyond all help that he would have hurried by without a second look if it had not been for the watch he saw lying on the ground close to the dead man’s side.  It was a very fine watch, and it seemed like tempting Providence to leave it lying there exposed to the view of any chance tramp who might come along.