No Story at All

THE lieutenant stood out on the barrack-steps, in the shining dew of the morning. A sunrise grin illumined his face, and his heels eased rhythmically up from the plane as though his toes had springs in them. Cold water and soap and a fundamental grooming gleamed from every inch of his body.

‘Did you sleep well?’ I asked, by way of being preposterous.

‘Sleep!’ scoffed he, ‘why, sleep’s for breakfast! “Sleep for your breakfast, walk for your dinner, and you ’re a very poor soldier if you can’t go to bed supperless.”That’s what my old grandmother used to tell me — sister and daughter and mother of soldiers, and a sensible woman anyway. Look here! See our moon-flowers.’

Out in front of the barracks, in the midst of the grassplot, blooms a bed of roses. But the turf around the bed had suddenly developed a crop related to roses in no sense at all. There was an ancient tin pail. There was a rickety, old fishing-basket. There was a small, sharp-pronged iron trident, with a long handle made of fresh-cut hickory sapling still wearing its bark. And, finally, there was a brand-new and wholly anonymous fyke.

In the battered tin pail gasped a dark and slippery mass of suckers and catfish, disturbed occasionally by spasmodic motion. In the old basket lay other suckers, which would never move again. In the clear water of the concrete horse-trough, near by, other catfish, rescued in extremis by some sympathetic trooper, raced hither and yon with fully restored energy. And then, the fyke!

A fyke is a thing invented when the god of the fishes was sleeping. Its mouth is broad and deep and deadly. Its body is a hopeless abyss. At intervals the body is distended by slender hoops, each with a deadly mouth of its own. And when its tail is weighted fast up-stream and its rapacious jaws yawn at its full length below, few are the fish that pass it safely by; nor does any that enters, small or great, return.

A fish’s inferno at all seasons, there are times and places when and where the law of Pennsylvania also holds the fyke abhorrent. Section 4 of the Act of May 1, 1909, P.L. 353, reads: —

‘It shall be unlawful to use fyke nets . . . from the first day of June to the thirtieth day of June inclusive . . . nor shall such nets be used in any streams inhabited by trout, at any time of the year. . . . Provided further, that each fyke net . . . must have fastened thereon a metallic tag bearing the name and residence of the owner thereof. Any person violating any of the provisions in this section, shall, on conviction ... be subject to a penalty of twenty dollars, together with the forfeiture of all boats, nets and other appliances used, to the Department of Fisheries.’

With another look at the collection on the grass, ‘Come inside,’ I begged, ‘and tell me the story.’

‘Oh, but it’s no story at all,’ protested the lieutenant. ‘We heard they were there, and we went and got ’em — just an everyday occurrence.’

Just an everyday occurrence, in the manner of the force, with nothing extraordinary about it — and that is exactly why it is told here, as seen, or gathered from those concerned.

I

Up in the hills east of Pittsburg lies a big, well-watered forest tract, at present operated only for ice-production. The owners have built storage houses, they have dammed their generous creek to get broad water-surface, and they cut each year quantities of clear, thick ice, netting a substantial profit.

This stream of theirs is called Dove Run. Dove Run City, consisting of a general store with a dozen houses more or less under its wing, lies all of five miles away from the ice-houses, and is the nearest point of human habitation. So, as the ice-dealers, what with their dams, their storehouses, and their hoisting machinery, not to mention their great timber area, have a considerable property to protect, and no neighbors to help them at it, they keep in their employ a private watchman.

The watchman, a good, decent old man, lives alone in the heart of the tract intrusted to his care; and he spends twelve hours of each day, winter and summer, contentedly pottering about the place.

He is a good woodsman, knowing every tree, rock, and runlet in all his domain. He would do his duty always, to the extent of reason. But you could not in reason expect him to make much of a fight against ugly marauders, should such appear; nor could you expect him to risk incurring the active ill-will of any one prone to revenge. His home is too solitary and exposed, and, above all, he has only private authority behind him.

This watchman, then, had long been a witness to fish-poaching practiced in spite of him. Gangs from a distance would swoop down on his dams out of season, fish their fill, using illegal devices, and be off and away long before he could send word out of the woods concerning them. Incidentally, whenever in the course of his daily rounds he came upon these untrammeled sons of Belial, they would offer enthusiastically to throw him either into his dam or into their own camp-fire, with the single alternative that he mind his own business. All this irritated the old man more than a little, but in point of fact he was helpless — until the night before the dewy morning that begins this story that is no story at all.

It was an hour after taps. The barracks reserves were sound asleep — asleep as fire-engine horses are, with their wits on tiptoe behind their eyelids and their shoulders one jump from the collar. The orderly at the telephone sat with the ‘ Digest of Criminal Law and Procedure’ between his elbows, grinding page 26. It is your best chance at hard nuts, when the crowd has gone to the field of dreams and the troubled world outside lies at its maximum of peace.

‘“From some lawful act done in an unlawful manner,”’ muttered the orderly; '“from some unlawful act done,” ’ — and then — Z-zing went the telephone at his side.

‘State Police,’ his clear voice answered before the bell ceased echoing.

Mr. Hopper — Joe Hopper, storekeeper of Dove Run City — introduced himself on the wire.

‘Old Mr. Allardyce,’ said he, mumbling hurriedly, like a man afraid of being overheard, ‘old Mr. Allardyce, watchman on the Dove Run tract, has just sent out word that a gang of poachers is operating on his dams ’ — and sharp upon that terse statement came the click of the receiver returned to its hook.

Dove Run City, be it known, was anxious enough on its own account to see the poaching traffic stopped. The local and visiting poachers are amateur ruffians of some standing, drink heavily on their trips, and leave forest fires, robbed farms, and frightened women marking their trail in whatever direction. But Dove Run City, too, was desperately afraid of acquiring the ill-will of such gentry. Their casual depredations were heavy enough, without drawing down their deliberate wrath upon the weak and isolated little community. Better speak low and fast, then, with an eye over either shoulder, or else bear in silence and inform not at all.

‘I’ll take this job myself,’ said the lieutenant, springing out of bed. And as he jumped downstairs, buckling on his holster belt, he named the trooper to accompany him, and named also a four-month recruit who should profit by a mild taste of experience under his officer’s eye.

It is a goodish trip from barracks out to that forest tract, and time counted. So they took the troop car, covering the road to Dove Run City at a speed that the hour allowed. But the ‘General Store’ was sound asleep, and Joe Hopper’s wife, peering from an upper window in her nightcap, had no views to offer concerning Joe’s whereabouts. Joe was ‘away,’quite as the lieutenant expected. Joe had done his part, and had no idea whatever of letting himself in for identification with a subject so delicate.

So the lieutenant drove on, climbing the worn wood-roads through the tall timber, till at last the headlights picked out old Allardyce’s cabin, snuggled like a big fungus beneath a wall of rock.

It was half an hour after midnight by now, and Allardyce had turned in. But, whether he had foreseen the moment, or whether by usual habit, he needed only to put on his shoes, coat, and hat, to be fully dressed. However, the prospect ahead so excited him that all his energies fled to his tongue. Sitting on the edge of the bed in the midst of a turbulent ocean of patchwork quilt, one shoe on and the other dangling in his hand, he had to rehearse over and over again the story of the day. Each time that he came to his own personal clash with the invaders he grew more truculent.

‘An’ they standin’ there, the big, ugly loafers, up to their belts in water, layin’ their traps right under my eyes!

I says to ’em, I says, “ Git out o’ here. Don’t you know you’re lawbreakers and thieves?”

‘They says, “Git out yerself, old feller, and git out quick, or we’ll drown ye!”

‘I says, “That’s what you’ve been threatenin’, you and the likes of you, any time these three years. Now I give ye fair warnin’,” I says, “I’m done with ye. I’ll have no more nonsense from ye. No, sir! B’ gosh! ’says I, if ye ever darst to come here again I’ll jest slough ye!”

‘So then I went off and left them. I would n’t demean myself with argyin’ with such no further. And after nightfall a chance come to get word in to the settlement —’

‘Let him put that other shoe on, for heaven’s sake, or we won’t get away till daylight,’ whispered the lieutenant to the trooper sitting by the bunk.

The trooper went outside and counted stars.

They bounced along the wood-roads a mile or so farther, and then, under the old man’s guidance, cut in on foot. He displayed a rabbit’s knowledge of the place, minute and accurate. Finally, between half-past two and three o’clock, some distance ahead, through the underbrush, appeared the dull light of a low fire.

‘That fire,’ said Allardyce, trembling with excitement, ‘is on the far side of yonder road, on the top of the bank and back a little. Opposite to it, on the side of the road, is an icehouse. Below, to the left, is Hemlock Run, where trout is plenty. That’s the place where they’ve got their fyke net — the villains! But I’ll fix ’em this time, so I will!’ And he shook his fist ferociously.

The detail moved quietly up to the icehouse, a big, dim hulk in the dark. Against the wall away from the road leaned a ladder, reaching to the rooftree. The lieutenant climbed the ladder, hoping from that height to get a glimpse of those around the fire. But naught could be seen. The interlacing underbrush confused the view, and no one was stirring. To advance on the place, crackling twigs, would merely serve to warn the quarry, who would fade away into leafy nothingness in the twinkling of an eye. So the only course was to sit tight, awaiting developments with the dawn.

At last pale patches began to show between the hemlock-tops overhead. Birds stirred, with broken twitterings. And then of a sudden the fire shot up into a blaze, where some one had kicked it and thrown on a log.

‘They’re going to make coffee, then draw their nets and get away before daylight,’ whispered the lieutenant, from the depths of experience.

He gathered his forces, made a forward movement, hid again in the underbrush, and waited.

In a very few moments, talking together as men do who still have sleep in their throats, three figures came lumbering down the slope from the campfire. Two of them crashed on along the bank toward the point where Allardyce had said their net was set. The third moved up toward the ambush.

The lieutenant waited until the pair, wading into the stream, were actually lifting the fyke. Then, —

‘Go arrest them,’ said he, to the trooper, indicating that the recruit should follow.

As the two officers quietly left cover, the third and nearest poacher caught sight of them. Horror-stricken, yet thinking himself unseen, he turned to warn his mates. Not daring to lift his voice, he stood like a disordered semaphore, wildly waving his arms and pointing. Too late. His mates saw him well enough, but they saw the troopers, also. The sight seemed to paralyze both their brains and the legs under them. Net in hand, they stood transfixed.

Then the lieutenant stepped into the open, moving toward the signaler, who now first became aware of his presence. Big, powerful hulk that he was, the fellow stood lowering, obviously weighing resistance or attack, as he balanced his fish-spear ominously.

At that instant, in the brush just behind him, appeared a strange vision — appeared the detached head of Allardyce, supported by its long gray whiskers even as the heads of the cherubim are supported by their several wings; Allardyce, who, lost to sight for a moment, had been prospecting on his own account and who now fancied himself the only discoverer of the poachers’ awakening.

‘St! St! They’re cornin’! They’re cornin’!’ His whisper rose like the whisper of steam from a locomotive, as, craning his neck over the sheeplaurel thicket, he beckoned the lieutenant violently.

Just as the words left his lips, he perceived the broad back of the poacher, not ten feet in front of him. His jaw dropped. His face bleached green in the dim dawn of the woods. Then the brush closed softly, softly over him, and before the enemy could fairly turn and locate the sound he had made, he was as invisible as a treetoad and as harmless.

Said the lieutenant, walking quietly toward the angry giant, ‘State Police officer. I arrest you.’

To which, after the briefest attempt to return his captor’s gaze, the delinquent meekly submitted.

‘Now we will walk over and look at your outfit,’ remarked Lieutenant Price, affably.

Around the camp-fire lay a lot of fish, some speared, some netted; the ordinary camp-supplies, two cases of beer, a more than liberal allowance of whiskey, and, end to the blaze, a pile of blankets of unusual size.

Struck by the shape of the pile, the lieutenant gingerly plucked one corner from the far end of the heap, lifted it a trifle and looked inside — on the face of a sleeper. Automatically his hand dropped. But the outline of that face — He lifted the corner again, for another brief survey of the nose and eyebrow.

‘Who is that fellow?’ he inquired of his prisoner.

‘That fellow,’ growled the giant, ‘is my wife.’

Very quietly, very gently, the lieutenant retreated, propelling his man back down the bank, and handing him over to the detail for safe keeping. Then he set out on a side-trip of mercy, to make sure that Allardyce had effected his escape and was safely out of sight.

Returning, satisfied, his eye encountered a new figure. High on the stream bank, solitary, stood a young Napoleon gazing upon Waterloo. Arms folded, tight-breeched legs wide apart, hat over eyes, chin on breast, attention fixed in gloomy abstraction, he stood like an image of bronze. But his very solitude screamed for interruption and his contours could not be questioned. The lieutenant, shying, swung a wide detour, to join the detail now at the camp-fire.

‘ How did you come into these woods?’ he demanded of the prisoners.

‘By automobile.’

‘Is the car coming after you?’

‘Yes.’

‘When?’

‘Six o’clock this morning.’

‘Very well. We will take you three prisoners, the fish you have caught, and your fyke and fishing-traps in our car. Your own conveyance can take out your proper belongings later on. Now pick up the stuff. We’ll be going.’

The two of the fyke-net hastened by obedience to acquire such merit as they might, and, laden with the proof of their sin, started ahead on the outward trail, closely guarded by the trooper and his eager understudy.

The lieutenant remained a moment behind. The camp-fire must be extinguished to the last spark; he directed his captive to perform that operation. Sullenly kicking it apart, the giant stamped it over with his great water boots. Then, some points of red still gleaming, he snatched two bottles of beer from the case on the ground, knocked their heads off, nipped one neck between each thumb and forefinger, and, legs astride, stood with his chin to the sky, draining the first while he emptied the second at full arm s length on the sizzling embers. The last spark dead, ‘March!’ ordered the lieutenant, and started his man in the wake of the vanguard.

Then from the steep a hollow shriek, sobs, broken cries, loud weeping: Napoleon had found his voice, and it was no frail organ.

‘She’s scared!’ grumbled the giant, with scant evidence of sympathy. ‘Does n’t like being left alone.’

Said the lieutenant, ‘Go over and tell her to be patient, to wait here quietly and take care of the stuff, till your car comes in for her.’

Which being accomplished and the wails hushed, the rear division fell in, and had soon covered the distance to the waiting troop motor.

Then the lieutenant took thought once again of poor old Allardyce, left all alone in those big, dark woods without a neighbor, with nothing but private authority to stiffen him — poor old Allardyce, of a certainty shaking in his shoes at this very moment. What if some suspicion did lurk in these rascals’ minds that to him they owed their undoing? Then indeed were his fears well founded. Something must be done to square him. For a moment the young officer considered. Then he called to the man at the wheel, ‘Run down to that watchman’s shanty where we stopped coming in.’

Every aperture was tight shut in the cabin under the rock; effect of a householder dead to the world, rounding out a ten hours’ slumber.

‘ Pound on that door. Wake him up! ’ roared the lieutenant. ‘I don’t leave these woods till I’ve shown light to that citizen.’

In a moment, propelled by the hand of the recruit, out came the old man, wavering pitifully. The recruit’s gaze was very wide as he towered, erect as a white-wood, behind his convoy. But his ruddy young face was admirably stony.

‘Good! You’re the man I found here last night,’ the lieutenant bit out in tones of stinging wrath. ‘Now, listen and understand. The next time a State Police officer asks information of you, take care you tell him the truth and the whole truth; tell it quick, and he civil about it. This is your warning!’

As the speaker finished, his off eyelid closed lightly.

The old man proved no laggard in the uptake. ‘Yes, sir,’ he mumbled, sliding rapidly into a sulky slouch.

And all the way out of the woods the recruit wrestled in his own mind with a foolish illusion that he had seen the shadow of a quiver in the nigh eye of old Allardyce.

II

‘So we got home about an hour ago, put our guests in our safe-deposit box, dumped the exhibits under the roses, got a bath and a shave and breakfast — and now you have the story from A to Z inclusive.’

‘What’s the next move with the people in the safe-deposit?’

‘J. P.’

‘When?’

‘Now. Want to come along?’

The Justice of the Peace holds his court in a little one-story pagoda, lately the shop of the village cobbler. Perhaps the cobbler has died, or inherited means, or gone to Pittsburg to make munitions. Anyway, his counter is bare, and his shelves, once dedicated to shiny-toed shoes, blacking, and laces, now display nothing more than a few odd volumes of old law reports, sustained considerably off the perpendicular by a chunky Compendium of Human Knowledge and by a Digest of the Laws of Pennsylvania.

The only furnishings in the room are the justice’s desk, four wooden chairs, a rocker, and a dim-chimneyed kerosene bracket-lamp. An old sleigh-bell, suspended over the door on a swan’sneck of rusty tin, gives a feeble clink as the door opens, thereby flying in the face of the legend printed with many flourishes on a bit of green paper stuck to the opposite wall.

‘Keep Your Tongue Still,’ says the legend.

The justice, sitting at his desk, gravely returns the salute of the officers of the State Police. There are four of them now — the lieutenant, the trooper, the recruit, and the first sergeant of the troop, who will conduct the prosecution.

The justice is rather a ponderous man, perhaps sixty-five years old, with a kindly, painstaking face and a big, honest nose bestridden by a pair of steel-bowed spectacles. His right sleeve hangs empty, pinned to his shoulder.

The prisoners are now seated before him. The first two are middle-aged men; the third, the giant, is in his late twenties. One has the face of a drunkard, one is twin to an ox, and the last, more clearly cut, is in a primitive way handsome. Yesterday’s beard bristles on their chins, and their thick curly locks are tousled. Each man of them must weigh two hundred pounds, variously distributed; and in their stiff, yellow canvas hunting suits and their big water-boots, they look colossi, — hulking, shambling, colossi, — all of them. Eyes on the floor, elbows on knees, they sprawl in their chairs, glumly contemplating the battered tin pail planted in their midst.

That pail is full of expiring fish, calling with their last gasps for vengeance!

Attracted by the glimpse afforded through the uncurtained windows, a passing citizen stops, stares, and then abandons his errand for the entertainment of the moment. He pushes open the door, nods to the justice and to the State Police officers, and silently vaults to a seat on the counter, where he settles himself to observe, swinging his legs comfortably.

Next, the village clergyman and his theologue son, on their way to the postoffice, are caught by the scene and enter. The divine bows first to the justice. Then he goes over and claps the lieutenant on the shoulder, as he grasps his hand.

‘Always at the good work, I see,’ he whispers, and ranges himself beside the officer.

But the theologue, with a cheerful anticipatory grin, joins the leg-swinger on the counter. They say that the lad already preaches good sermons, and that he likes to draw his sub-texts from points nearer home than Palestine.

A small boy slips in. A farmer, glancing down from the box of his Conestoga as he drives by, reins up, hitches his team to the maple tree at the door, and joins the assembly. Two interested citizens follow him, and the room is full. Dead silence reigns, persistent, extraordinary. Is it the four stern young figures, grave of face, perfect of bearing, faultless of dress, wearing the sombre uniform of the State, who by their mere presence impose it?

The trial opens. The first sergeant, quiet, erect, soldierly, and utterly competent, stands at the justice’s side. Thomas Stone, Henry Landulik, and William Haddon are duly charged with using unlawful devices in a trout stream. ‘Guilty,’ pleads Stone, of the drink-sodden countenance. ‘Guilty,’ pleads Landulik, twin to the ox. ‘Not guilty,’ growls Haddon, the giant.

The lieutenant does not even look bored. The first sergeant calls him to testify. He tells his tale very briefly and with exceeding clarity both of statement and of diction. But the good old justice, plodding after him with laborious pen, loses the thread after the first two phrases. Therefore the officer, with respectful courtesy, goes back to the beginning and repeats his statement, four or five words at a time, pausing at each interval for the gray head bending over the stiff fingers to nod release. The story, as completed, presents all the facts essential to conviction, and presents them in the most terse and consecutive shape.

‘Do you wish to ask me any questions?’ the lieutenant asks Haddon.

‘No, sir.’

Then the first sergeant calls the trooper, who, duly sworn, testifies as ably as did his officer — while the justice, prompted from point to point by the quiet suggestions of the first sergeant in his capacity of prosecutor for the State, asks questions whose answers again underscore the vital incriminating facts. This complaint will never fail in a court of record on certiorari.

Then comes the turn of the fledgling recruit. Rigid, and blushing furiously under his superior’s eyes, the lad yet shows how well he is learning his lessons. He tells his story like the clear thinker he is bound to make of himself, without one extra or reconsidered word, and answers all questions as straight and clear as a bell answers its clapper.

The lieutenant cannot repress a movement of pride. ‘What do you think of my little recruit?’ he whispers. ‘ Promising? ’

But now Haddon is being sworn — and takes the oath and fulfills the succeeding formalities with a correct anticipation of requirements that tells its own story. Never, he testifies, notwithstanding — never before has he been under arrest in all his blameless existence. He went out with these his friends for a little lawful fishing. He fished with his hands and with a pole. He never saw or heard of a fyke. And when the fish stopped biting, he laid himself down by the fire and slept soundly till morning. At dawn he rose, went down to the stream and examined his poles; and was quietly returning to camp again, when, behold! the State Police jumped out from nowhere, without shadow of provocation, and inexplicably arrested him.

Then came the turn of the prosecuting officer. Without any raising of the voice, without any extra emphasis or apparent pressure, the first sergeant’s whole being flamed subtly trenchant, poised to win. His questions, quiet and seemingly simple, drove sharp, direct, incisive, obviously aimed straight at some clearly sighted goal. His material feet assuredly remained on the same spot by the justice’s side, yet you could have sworn that, with each closeclipped phrase, — there was not a dozen words in the longest of them, — he crowded the prisoner one pace farther toward the wall. Then came three bullet-like demands, three answering statements well foreseen—and bang! fell the trap. Caught beyond struggle in a hopelessly incriminating lie.

The justice raises his eyes to the officer with the unquestioning confidence of a child. His spectacles slip down on his nose while, without a word, the first sergeant turns to the shelf, takes down a law book, and lays it, open, before the magistrate, with his finger on paragraph and line.

‘In regard to Stone and Landulik,’ says he, ‘I would ask, they having pleaded guilty, that you impose a fine of twenty dollars on each of them, for one violation of the law. In regard to Mr. Haddon, there are three counts — the using of an illegal device in a trout stream, the operating of a net without a metallic tag attached, and the using of a spear out of season in a trout stream. I ask twenty dollars on each charge, or a sixty-dollar fine.’

The squire turned to the prisoners, addressing them.

‘Mr. Haddon,’ said he, ‘you are found guilty by the evidence given against you on three charges, and fined twenty dollars on each. If you are not prepared to pay the fine and costs, then you are committed to the jail of this county, one day for each dollar, or sixty days in jail. Stone and Landulik are fined twenty dollars and costs each, or twenty days in jail.’

The first sergeant, the while, had been observing the giant with a critical eye. Now he asked him a question aside, then addressed himself once more to the justice.

‘Mr. Haddon wishes to reopen the case and to be allowed to change his plea from not guilty to guilty. If you allow his request, I would ask that he pay the same fine as that laid upon the other two prisoners.’

‘ On your plea of guilty, Mr. Haddon, I fine you twenty dollars,’ the squire responded without hesitation.

‘Now,’ says the first sergeant, dropping his state prosecutor’s manner, ‘what do you men choose, jail or pay?’

The three look dolefully at their boots, speechless.

At last Stone sighs, ‘I ain’t got no twenty dollars. Guess I hafter take jail.’

‘ S’pose so,’ — ‘ Same here,’ groan the others.

A pause. Not one sign of sympathy on the part of the powers of the law.

‘Well, Stone,’ observes the lieutenant, dryly, ‘if you and Landulik have both invested all your money in cash registers and corner property, I think the least Haddon can do is save you from jail. He keeps the saloon!’

At which destructive home truth the masks of all three break down. They grin sheepishly.

‘ Can I go home and get the cash for us?’ asks Haddon.

As the canvas-clad trio, now entirely restored to good humor, lumbered off down the road under the shepherding care of the trooper, I turned to the lieutenant with a question or two.

‘ Why did you threaten to come down so hard on the giant?’

‘Because he lied and tried to escape us; to show him that we were perfectly willing and ready to take our case to court if he desired it; to show that we will fight if they drive us to it; to remind them that we present no charge that we cannot sustain.’

‘Why were you so easy with them all in the end?’

‘Because these three, as it happens, are not really bad men, and the penalty we asked was severe enough for them.’

‘Why did you keep the woman entirely out of the matter? Was n’t she equally guilty with the rest? And you never even spoke of her!'

The lieutenant’s face took on a look of patient martyrdom.

‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I’ll answer that, too. It’s like this: we figure that you should spare the women wherever it’s possible; and that you can use sense. One in a family is enough to strike. You need n’t rub it in.’

Later, down at barracks, he took from his desk a sheaf of manuscript, the first examination papers of the newest probation men. The lieutenant had framed the questions himself, to test the calibre of his lads.

‘Look here,’ he said, singling out a sheet, ‘perhaps this will help.’

Under the typewritten question: ‘What are the first essentials required of an officer of the Pennsylvania State Police Force?’ stood the following words, in the loose, boyish script of the fledgling recruit: ‘To know the law exactly. To do your whole duty and do it quick. To be gentle and courteous always. And never take any one’s bluff.’