Strange Clews to Crime
John Cooper kept a small hostelry at Castleford, in Yorkshire, England. In June, 1829, a young man calling himself William Jones, came to the place and asked for employment. He said he knew all about horses, and, furthermore, he wrote a good hand. Cooper was illiterate, and had long felt the need of someone to help him, as he had recently built a flour mill and found it hard to keep a reckoning with the farmers who brought their wheat to be ground. Jones was about twenty-three, tall and robust, and of very pleasant manners, and, having read to Cooper and his wife out of an old newspaper, and having shown them what he could do with a pen, he was engaged at a salary of one pound a month and his board.
About three weeks after this there come to the house a peddler—a man nearly twice the age of Jones and of a different kind. He was short and robust, with red hair, a hump on one shoulder, and arms unnaturally long and sinewy. This man drank his ale, ate his bread and cheese, and offered his wares for sale. Then he sat by the fire, told good stories and related strange adventures in out-of-the-way places among the hills and on the moors.