The pedlar's eyes glistened as he witnessed the speedy effects of the
drug. In another moment his fingers were fumbling in the waistcoat
pocket of the prostrate John Archer, and he had succeeded in
transferring the watch from the gamekeeper's pocket to his own. He then began rifling his other pockets, but there was little else worth
taking on poor John's person--a few loose coins, perhaps, nothing more. At this moment De Chevron came up, and lifting the gun from the ground,
said, "This gun is yours, Mike." Then, retreating a few paces behind the pedlar, he levelled the gun at
his head, but not being quite correct in his aim, the bullet lodged in
the man's shoulder. Mike gave a yell of agony on finding himself
wounded, but he still might have imagined that the gun had gone off
accidentally and had thus hit him in the shoulder, had not De Chevron
immediately come up and with one tremendous blow on the head from the
butt end of the gun, felled him to the ground. "Treachery!" feebly gasped out the wretched man. Then followed a second blow, a third and even a fourth, until the
unhappy dupe spoke no more. To drag the body to a ditch thickly
overgrown with nettles and brambles which completely concealed it from
view was the work of the moment, having previously despoiled the corpse
of its recently acquired treasure and restored the same to the pocket of
its owner, who still lay in the arms of Morpheus. Then replacing the gun
by the side of its sleeping master, and bedaubing the gamekeeper's
clothes with blood, he first poured out the contents of the pedlar's
bottle on the grass, then started homewards. No one appears to have met him, either before or after the murder. Circumstances seem to have been peculiarly favourable to him that
evening, for chancing to be excessively windy at that hour, and the road
being of loose white sand, not a single footprint was to be discovered
the next morning. It was somewhere about midnight when John Archer woke
up from his trance. His first wonderment was how he got there. He
imagined that he must in some way or other have become intoxicated. Then
he thought of the pedlar. It was strange, he did not remember having
drunk more than one glass, but it was not until he reached his cot that
he was aware of the plight he was in. Where did all that blood come from? he asked himself. He must be wounded
he thought. However, he examined himself all over and could discover
nothing. The barrel of his gun was discharged, too, and the butt end of
it stained with blood. He was more bewildered than ever. He then related
the whole of the circumstances to his parents, who, however, could not
bring themselves to believe otherwise than that their son must have been
intoxicated, although his character for sobriety was well known. The blood stains, however, and the discharged barrel still remained a
mystery and became the subject of much conjecture amongst his friends. The blood, as he owned himself, did not proceed from any wound he had
received. Whose blood was it then? The butt end of his gun being stained
with blood would argue violence used against some person or animal. John was known to be an honest and humane man--the very last man in the
world to commit murder; still, under the influence of intoxication he
might have committed a rash act. When questioned as to whether he
remembered anything, he shook his head, and merely related his interview
with the pedlar, from whom he felt confident of not having accepted more
than one glass of wine. His manner throughout all this questioning was
open and frank, and everyone agreed that, mysterious as the affair
appeared, they were quite sure that young Archer was innocent of murder. The day after, however, a waggoner's dog passing by the scene of the
murder was observed by its master to be sniffing and burrowing in a
certain ditch. The waggoner took no notice of the circumstance at first,
until the dog set up a howl and refused to leave the spot. It then
seemed to be tearing or dragging some heavy substance with its teeth,
and finally succeeded in leaving bare the body of the pedlar. The
pedlar had already been missed in the village, and the waggoner at once
recognised the body. He lost no time in rousing the neighbourhood, for
he dreaded being discovered near the corpse, lest he should be
implicated in the murder. The body of the pedlar was removed to the nearest cottage, and a surgeon
sent for immediately to examine it. Contrary to everybody's expectation,
the surgeon pronounced that life was not yet extinct, though he held out
no hopes at all of ultimate recovery. He did all he could do under the circumstances, gave his instructions to
the inmates of the cottage, and said that he would call again. Then
arose the question, who could be the perpetrator of the deed? Suspicion
immediately attached itself to John Archer. Witnesses came forward and deposed that they had met John Archer with
blood on his clothes and the butt end of his rifle also stained with
blood. The wounds on the head of the all-but murdered man appeared to
have been inflicted by the butt end of a rifle, therefore this was
strong evidence; but there was yet stronger. The bullet having been
extracted from the dying man's shoulder, was at once recognised by all
as belonging to John Archer, his bullets being marked always in a
peculiar manner, added to which it fitted exactly into the bore of
Archer's rifle. This last evidence was considered conclusive, and John Archer was
conducted off to prison to await his trial at the next assizes. Imagine
the grief and dismay of poor John's aged parents, who had looked forward
to his being the prop of their old age, at hearing that their only son
had been arrested on a charge of murder. Imagine the shame and confusion
of John himself, the surprise and indignation of his intimate friends,
including ourselves, who still believed in his innocence. As for poor Claribel, she was struck completely dumb at the news; she
could not believe her ears. It was not for a considerable time that she
could realise the fact; but when she did, she neither fainted, burst
into tears, nor behaved in any way extravagantly. Her grief was too
deeply seated. She moped about the house with her eyes fixed, as if she
were walking in her sleep. It was just this calm, in a nature like hers,
that I dreaded far more than any violent transport of grief, for I
feared that the shock had been too great for her, and had turned her
brain. What made the affair doubly painful to her was that the village
people had already begun to couple her name with John Archer's. Folks speaking of the arrest would say that it was Claribel Falkland's
young man that had been arrested for murder, although there had never
been anything like an engagement between them. When she recovered herself somewhat, she said, "Molly, depend upon it,
that De Chevron is at the bottom of this."