The Child Witness

The Arnolds lived in an old brown house which you may yet notice at the right of the road just as you enter the village of L—, Pennsylvania, from the south. The house stands back about ten rods from the road, among peach and apple trees, and the little path running up from the gate is bordered with pinks and moss.

I should not speak so confidently; it is five years since I saw the village or the house, and perhaps the awful tragedy enacted under the moss covered roof one night may have kept the house tenantless and allowed time to tumble it down.

One day, in answer to a telegram sent from the nearest railroad station to L—, a matter of a dozen miles, I rode into the quaint old village on the top of the stage, and at once reported myself to the town authorities. Every inhabitant of the village, even to the ragged urchins sitting on the tavern porch, carried a grave face and talked in whispers. Had I not known a double murder had been committed the night before, I could have read some news almost as bad by glancing at the faces of the towns-people.

While I was eating my supper at the only hotel the town clerk and the president of the village sat opposite and told me the story. It seemed that Arnold, who was nearly 60 years old, had two sons in another part of the state, and, wishing to divide up his property before his death, had a few days before the murder disposed of a farm and some manufacturing interests in Pittsburgh, realizing several thousand dollars in cash. He intended visiting the sons and dividing the money between them, but had placed it in the village bank until he should be ready to go. Mrs. Arnold was old and gray-headed, and the couple would have been all alone had it not been for Little Jack, as he was called, a child four years old. The child had been abandoned by a woman passing through the village, and the Arnolds had taken it for company; in fact… Read More