f the little hill.

He felt perfectly natural--not like a man who had just taken a
fellowman's life--but natural and safe, and well satisfied with himself
and with his morning's work. And he was safe; that was the main
thing--absolutely safe. Without hitch or hindrance he had done the thing
for which he had been planning and waiting and longing all these months.
There had been no slip or mischance; the whole thing had worked out as
plainly and simply as two and two make four. No living creature except
himself knew of the meeting in the early morning at the head of Little
Niggerwool, exactly where the squire had figured they should meet; none
knew of the device by which the other man had been lured deeper and
deeper in the swamp to the exact spot where the gun was hidden. No one
had seen the two of them enter the swamp; no one had seen the squire
emerge, three hours later, alone.

The gun, having served its purpose, was hidden again, in a place no
mortal eye would ever discover. Face downward, with a hole between his
shoulder blades, the dead man was lying where he might lie undiscovered
for months or for years, or forever. His pedler's pack was buried in
the mud so deep that not even the probing crawfishes could find it. He
would never be missed probably. There was but the slightest likelihood
that inquiry would ever be made for him--let alone a search. He was a
stranger and a foreigner, the dead man was, whose comings and goings
made no great stir in the neighborhood, and whose failure to come again
would be taken as a matter of course--just one of those shiftless,
wandering Dagoes, here today and gone tomorrow. That was one of the best
things about it--these Dagoes never had any people in this country to
worry about them or look for them when they disappeared. And so it was
all over and done with, and nobody the wiser. The squire clapped his
hands together briskly with the air of a man dismissing a subject from
his mind for good, and mended his gait.

He felt no stabbings of conscience. On the contrary, a glow of
gratification filled him. His house was saved from scandal; his present
wife would philander no more--before his very eyes--with these young
Dagoes, who came from nobody knew where, with packs on their backs and
persuasive, wheedling tongues in their heads. At this thought the squire
raised his head and considered his homestead. It looked good to him--the
small white cottage among the honey locusts, with be