et
with the stock and barrel clogged and streaked with mud. "I found THAT
too,--and look! one barrel discharged! And," he added hurriedly, as
approaching a climax, "look ye,--what I nat'rally took for wet from the
rain--inside that hat--was--blood!"

"Nonsense!" said Harkutt, putting the hat aside with a new
fastidiousness. "You don't think"--

"I think," said Peters, lowering his voice, "I think, by God! HE'S BIN
AND DONE IT!"

"No!"

"Sure! Oh, it's all very well for Billings and the rest of that
conceited crowd to sneer and sling their ideas of 'Lige gen'rally as
they did jess now here,--but I'd like 'em to see THAT." It was difficult
to tell if Mr. Peters' triumphant delight in confuting his late
companions' theories had not even usurped in his mind the importance of
the news he brought, as it had of any human sympathy with it.

"Look here," returned Harkutt earnestly, yet with a singularly cleared
brow and a more natural manner. "You ought to take them things over to
Squire Kerby's, right off, and show 'em to him. You kin tell him how you
left 'Lige here, and say that I can prove by my daughter that he went
away about ten minutes after,--at least, not more than fifteen." Like
all unprofessional humanity, Mr. Harkutt had an exaggerated conception
of the majesty of unimportant detail in the eye of the law. "I'd go with
you myself," he added quickly, "but I've got company--strangers--here."

"How did he look when he left,--kinder wild?" suggested Peters.

Harkutt had begun to feel the prudence of present reticence. "Well," he
said, cautiously, "YOU saw how he looked."

"You wasn't rough with him?--that might have sent him off, you know,"
said Peters.

"No," said Harkutt, forgetting himself in a quick indignation, "no,
I not only treated him to another drink, but gave him"--he stopped
suddenly and awkwardly.

"Eh?" said Peters.

"Some good advice,--you know," said Harkutt, hastily. "But come, you'd
better hurry over to the squire's. You know YOU'VE made the discovery;
YOUR evidence is important, and there's a law that obliges you to give
information at once."

The excitement of discovery and the triumph over his disputants being
spent, Peters, after the Sidon fashion, evidently did not relish
activity as a duty. "You know," he said dubiously, "he mightn't be dead,
after all."

Harkutt became a trifle distant. "You know your own opinion of the
thing," he replied after a pause. "You've circumstantial ev