me appearance of average intelligence and
refinement as might be seen in the chance occupants of one of our city
stages. Indeed, I marked but one amongst them all who seemed to take
any interest in the inquiry as an inquiry; all the rest appearing to be
actuated in the fulfilment of their duty by the commoner instincts of
pity and indignation.

Dr. Maynard, the well-known surgeon of Thirty-sixth Street, was the
first witness called. His testimony concerned the nature of the wound
found in the murdered man's head. As some of the facts presented by him
are likely to prove of importance to us in our narrative, I will proceed
to give a synopsis of what he said.

Prefacing his remarks with some account of himself, and the manner in
which he had been summoned to the house by one of the servants, he went
on to state that, upon his arrival, he found the deceased lying on a
bed in the second-story front room, with the blood clotted about a
pistol-wound in the back of the head; having evidently been carried
there from the adjoining apartment some hours after death. It was the
only wound discovered on the body, and having probed it, he had found
and extracted the bullet which he now handed to the jury. It was lying
in the brain, having entered at the base of the skull, passed obliquely
upward, and at once struck the _medulla oblongata,_ causing instant
death. The fact of the ball having entered the brain in this peculiar
manner he deemed worthy of note, since it would produce not only
instantaneous death, but an utterly motionless one. Further, from the
position of the bullet-hole and the direction taken by the bullet, it
was manifestly impossible that the shot should have been fired by the
man himself, even if the condition of the hair about the wound did not
completely demonstrate the fact that the shot was fired from a point
some three or four feet distant. Still further, considering the angle at
which the bullet had entered the skull, it was evident that the deceased
must not only have been seated at the time, a fact about which there
could be no dispute, but he must also have been engaged in some
occupation which drew his head forward. For, in order that a ball should
enter the head of a man sitting erect at the angle seen here, of 45
degrees, it would be necessary, not only for the pistol to be held very
low down, but in a peculiar position; while if the head had been bent
forward, as in the act of writing, a man holding a