A few weeks later I received a postal card from him sent from a little town in Iowa. "Kind regards to you, Mr. Older, and thanks for your help. Love to Donald Lowrie. I shall be here for about four weeks. Yours, Tim."

I showed the card to Lowrie. He smiled and said, "He'll be there four weeks. To me that sounds like 'thirty days'." Lowrie was right. Tim had taken to stealing again. Later we heard from him from other jails, and if he is alive is probably in one now. He just can't keep step with the rest of us.

O

CHARLES AUGUSTUS BOGGS

NE evening about dinner time, Boggs suddenly stepped out of the darkness into our kitchen at the ranch. Mrs. Older and I were away, and Lowrie and George were in charge. The boys recognized Boggs at once as an exprisoner. They knew him by the cut of his suit of prison made clothes and the squeak of his prison brogans.

"I have walked over from San Jose," said Boggs. "I haven't had anything to eat in three days. I know Older will give me a meal and put me up for the night."

"Sure he will," said Lowrie. "He isn't here, but George and I will cook a dinner for you."

The boys started a fire in the cook stove, and began preparing the potatoes.

"By trade I am a cook," said Boggs. "Let me get the dinner."

Lowrie and George stepped aside and Boggs soon had a fine dinner under way. He ate ravenously, proving at least that he was very hungry.

When the dishes were washed and the kitchen swept, Mrs. Older arrived from the city. Lowrie presented Boggs to her as a starving man they had just fed.

Mrs. Older asked them to give him a room at the farm house, and they went away together.

In the morning, after breakfast, Boggs insisted to Mrs. Older that he wanted to do some work to pay for the two meals.

"What can you do?" Mrs. Older asked.

"By trade," said Boggs, "I am a locomotive engineer.' There being no locomotives on the ranch, Mrs. Older was puzzled. "I have only gardening work here," she said. "I am a professional gardener," said Boggs.

Doubting, but curiously interested in this new type of "nut," she said, "Very well, I want some flower beds made." She pointed out the spot.

Boggs seized a spade and Mrs. Older left him at work and went about her own affairs. Later he asked if she wanted the flower beds in the form of stars or heart-shaped. She looked down at the garden and saw that he was making both designs, and executing them beautifully. For the first time, she realized that he had done landscape gardening in prisons.

She told him she wanted just the ordinary flower beds, and he quickly transformed them to suit her taste. He was wonderfully skillful, and when I returned from the city that evening Mrs. Older excitedly related to me the story of Boggs and admiringly pointed out the work he had done. He was undoubtedly a genius gone wrong. She was glad to employ him permanently at good wages.

A few days later as I was motoring home, George, excited, stopped me at the barn.

"The yearling steer has broken his leg. What are we to do?" said George.

Knowing no answer, I made none, but drove on up the hill to the house. I met Boggs coming down. I told him my trouble. He was smilingly calm. "Don't worry, Mr. Older. By trade I am a butcher. I'll take care of the steer."

An hour or two later he showed me the carcass, hung on a tree, dressed as might be for a Christmas stall in a city market.

"If we leave it here over night, Boggs," I said, "the coyotes will get it. We would better hitch up the team and haul it to the farm house." The farm house was two hundred yards distant.

"It will not be necessary," said Boggs, buoyantly. "I am a trained athlete; been in the professional game for years." The steer weighed 240 pounds. Boggs, 5 feet 6 in height, swung it lightly on to his back and trotted away with it.

The plumbing in the house went wrong. The nearest plumber was four miles away. We consulted Boggs. "Don't distress yourselves," he said cheerily; "by trade I am a plumber."

He did the work easily, skillfully and quickly.

When the first rain came water in torrents poured down the hill, threatening the very foundations of the house. Frightened, we summoned Boggs.

"I have specialized in cement work." In a day he had made a long cement drain at the back of the house, which carried away the water. It is still in operation and in per

fect condition.

The paint in the dining room needed retouching. It was a delicate shade of gray. Mrs. Older approached Boggs. There was genuine doubt in the tone of her voice.

"Mr. Boggs, you don't happen to know anything about painting, do you?"

"Four years' experience as an interior house painter and decorator," he said.

Boggs mixed the paint, caught the shade exactly and painted the dining room.

One of the cows was taken ill. Boggs was called in.

"I'll treat the cow." He He built culverts for the

"Yes; I am a veterinary," he said. did. She was well in three days. road, criticised the plowman's work and gave valuable hints to the men who were pruning the orchards.

Late Christmas Eve we heard Friend, the dog, barking violently on the porch. He barked so earnestly that we thought there must be some one in front of the house. There was. When we went out in the morning we saw stretched across the front of the house the words "Merry Christmas." They were done in red toyone berries, surrounded by garlands of leaves gathered from the hillsides. Boggs had

done it.

We were delighted, thanked him for the surprise and complimented him on his skill in lettering.

"It comes easy to me," he said. "I am a woodcarver by trade."

Of course, we wanted Boggs to stay with us forever and ever, but we were sure he wouldn't. He had been with us nearly two months, when he suddenly told Mrs. Older that he never stayed anywhere more than two months.

"Why not remain with us?" she urged. "We like you, and will pay you well. You could save some money."

"No," he said. "I feel I must go. I came up here to get away from pursuing women. I thought if I grew a full beard, perhaps I wouldn't be so attractive and they would let me alone. My beard is grown now, so I'll leave when my month is up."

We paid him, and parted with him sorrowfully.

Two weeks later little Mary, a member of our household, was reading a San Jose paper. She suddenly looked up, startled.

"Mrs. Older, was Mr. Boggs' first name Charles Augustus?"

"Yes; why?"

"He's in jail," said Mary.

Boggs had attached himself to a matrimonial bureau in San Jose in the role of a professional husband. He had married a young woman with intent to swindle her out of a sum of money. He got out of the scrape, but did not return to the ranch. He was evidently ashamed of what he had done. A, few weeks later he called on me at the Bulletin office and wanted to come back. In fact, he agreed to go down with me that afternoon. But he did not appear. There were two ex-burglars with us at that time, and Boggs, I reasoned, feared to face them, knowing that his was a kind of crime that even burglars would not forgive.

Some time later he wrote me from Lodi. He was in jail on a serious charge. He asked me to help him. But his was

a case this time in which no one could help him. I wrote him and told him so. I have not heard from him since. No doubt he is now doing time in some prison.

Boggs was one of the most useful men I have ever known. He could do so many things that are necessary to be done, and could do them well. He said he had been a woman's dressmaker and had taken prizes for his skill. He had given us such proof of his ability in so many ways that we were inclined to believe that he could even make women's dresses.

Boggs has the misfortune to have some twist in his mental processes that he is in no way responsible for. Whatever the twist is, it is as yet far out of the reach and beyond the knowledge of science. Being abnormal, he does abnormal things, is judged by the standards of normal men, condemned and sent to prison to be corrected and made better by a stupid form of punishment. In fact, a sick man is subjected to a treatment that would make a sound man ill.

Thus, in this cruel way, the human race slowly gropes toward the light.