Release date is 2026-02-09

an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer

The hermit of Turkey Hollow by Arthur Cheney Train is a legal mystery novel written in the early 20th century. Set in a small Mohawk Valley town, it follows the murder of a reclusive “hermit,” the hounding of a gentle drifter known as Skinny the Tramp, and the defense mounted by the crafty attorney Ephraim Tutt. Expect a courtroom battle over timing and circumstantial evidence, colored by village politics, fraternal lodges, and a prosecutor with sharp ambitions.

The opening of the story sets the scene in Turkey Hollow, where a moth-pinning hermit spars with Skinny over life, death, and souls, beneath the watch of an old grandfather clock. After the corrupt, newly minted district attorney Hezekiah Mason pays Skinny his trust income and dismisses his questions, a storm clears to reveal a rainbow; Skinny dashes to the hermit’s cabin and glimpses a crock of gold just before a shot is fired. Charlie Emerson, a mill hand nearby, hears the cry and the shot, finds the hermit dying, notes a broken bean pot, a gold coin clenched in the dead man’s fist, fresh boot prints, and a moth beating at the window. Minutes later, Skinny shows up breathless in town at exactly four o’clock; Emerson arrives at 4:15 with the alarm, leading to a frenzied chase and arrest. The town erupts; Skinny is indicted, while the local Sacred Camels fraternal lodge hires Ephraim Tutt to defend him. As the trial begins, Mason leans on the footprints, the gold in Skinny’s pockets, and his silence, but tries to sidestep the time of death; on cross-examination, Tutt quietly draws from Emerson that the hermit’s clock showed four o’clock when he reached the body—hinting at a crucial alibi—just as the sheriff’s testimony starts. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921