whenever any article of that sort met his eyes. In fact, they had to
remove from the room the cups, tumblers, and even the castors. At times
he spoke rationally, but after the second day only in momentary flashes
of sanity.

The deposition of the attending physician, after giving the general
facts with regard to the sickness of the patient and his subsequent
demise, proceeded thus:

I found the patient weak, and suffering from loss of blood and rest, and
want of nourishment; occasionally sane, but for the most part flighty
and in a comatose condition. The wound was an ordinary gunshot wound,
produced most probably by the ball of a navy revolver, fired at the
distance of ten paces. It entered the back near the left clavicle,
beneath the scapula, close to the vertebrae between the intercostal
spaces of the fifth and sixth ribs; grazing the pericardium it traversed
the mediastinum, barely touching the oesophagus, and vena azygos,
but completely severing the thoracic duct, and lodging in the xiphoid
portion of the sternum. Necessarily fatal, there was no reason, however,
why the patient could not linger for a week or more; but it is no
less certain that from the effect of the wound he ultimately died. I
witnessed the execution of the paper shown to me--as the statement of
deceased--at his request; and at the time of signing the same he was
in his perfect senses. It was taken down in my presence by Jacobs,
the Assistant District-Attorney of Placer County, and read over to the
deceased before he affixed his signature. I was not present when he
breathed his last, having been called away by my patients in the town of
Auburn, but I reached his bedside shortly afterward. In my judgment, no
amount of care or medical attention could have prolonged his life more
than a few days.

(Signed) Karl Liebner, M. D.

The statement of the deceased was then introduced to the jury as
follows:

People of the State of California, } vs. } Bartholomew Graham. }

Statement and Dying Confession of Charles P. Gillson, taken in articulo
mortis by George Simpson, Notary Public.

On the morning of Sunday, the 14th day of May, 1871, I left Auburn alone
in search of the body of the late Gregory Summerfield, who was reported
to have been pushed from the cars at Cape Horn, in this county, by one
Leonidas Parker, since deceased. It was not fully light when I reached
the track of the Central Pacific Railroad. Having mined at an early day
on Thompso