I must have slept more than three hours when I was aroused, and when I last looked at my watch it was between eleven and twelve. It was three when Tom knocked on my door, and he had just come from him. He found him still warm, and he could hardly have been dead more than half an hour. But he was dead; and he must have died instantly. The bullet, fired from behind, struck him below the left shoulder, and went through his heart. The body lay at the foot of the cliff; and, from its appearance, Henry must have been standing near its verge when he was struck, and have fallen or been pushed over. The fall was upward of twenty feet: there were bruises on the body, and some dirt and a small fragment of rock had fallen with him from above. He must have been standing there, looking down into the wood below, when the villain crept up behind him and fired. The shot was at close range,—not more than eight or ten feet away. It seems strange that he heard no footstep. Yet, if he had, he would surely have turned round, and then the bullet would have struck him in front.
These points will probably be elucidated at the trial,—when we know whom to try. Of course there is no doubt that the murderer was one of the burglars. Thus far, however, no trace of any burglars has been seen. Neither John nor Tom discovered any signs of them, either before or after the shooting. This is the more strange because the murder proves that they must have been there. They had made no attempt upon the house, however, though they must have known that it was empty; and if they got wind of our intention to capture them, or if, on arriving on the ground, they discovered our ambush, why did they not retire at once, instead of putting their necks in a noose by a wanton assassination? Had there been signs that Henry had attempted to arrest one of them, and that a struggle had taken place, we might suppose that they had shot him in self-defence; but the indications are that he was approached unawares. The evidence on this point will have to be carefully sifted. At present it is perplexing.
The dominion of mind over matter can seldom have been more conclusively illustrated than it was in my case, when I was made to comprehend what had happened. A moment before, I was as helpless as any cripple can be, and suffering acute pain. Five minutes afterwards, I was beside my brother's dead body, a quarter of a mile away: I have been conscious of no pain since, and now even the traces of inflammation are gone. I have no distinct recollection of what I did; but I must have sprung from my chair and run at full speed, all bandaged as I was, to the place where he lay. This, indeed, is Tom's account of the matter.
He says that towards two in the morning he heard a report as of
