Waterbury evening Democrat., 1893-09-26

By JULIAN HAWTHORNE.
ICopyriGht, lsOS. by American Press Associs-
 
CHAPTER XII.

presence of a calamity such as this. How futile and insincere all my specu- lations seem now! And now repentance is as futile, however sincere it may be But we must not think of our sorrow yet. The first thing to be done is to dis cover and to punish.
 l shall never forget that knocking at my door. 1 can hear it now. l shall hear it in my dreams. It seemed to carry its message with it before a word was spoken And yet, when the words were spoken, could not understand them. They fell like meaningless sounds on my ear And cannot help thinking that had been well and about that night this would not have happened. He must have exposed himself needlcssly He was always needless, confident and fearless l remember his saying once that he bore q charmed life. A curse on all supersti- tions! And be those juggling fiends no more believed who palter with us in double sense!
 It could not have happened earlier than o'clock i'll the morning. must have slept more than three hours whcnI was aroused. and when l last looked at my watch it was between II and 12. It was 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 moro than half an hour. But he was dead. and he must have died instantly. The bullet. fired from behind, struck him below the lcf: shoulder and went through his heart.
 The body lay at the foot of the chff. 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 20 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 look ing down into the wood below when the villain crept up behind him and fired The shot was at close range-not more than or 10 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 cluci- dated 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 bur glars 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 nccks in moose by a Hanton as sassinatiOu? 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 self defense, but the indications are that he vas approached unawarcs. The evidence on this point will have to be carefully slftcd. At present if is per plexing.
 The dominion of mind over matter can seldom have been more couclusively il- lustratcd than it was in my case when l was made to comprehend what had happened. \ moment before I was as helpless as any cripple can be and suf- fering acute pain. Five minutes after ward l was beside my brothers dead body, quarter of mile away. have been conscious of no pain since, and now even the traces of inflammation are gone. have no distinct recollection of what l did, but must have sprung from my chair and run at full speed, all band aged as l was. to the place where he lav This indeed is Toms account of the mat ter.
 He says that toward , in the morning he heard q report aS of pistol, but it was at some distance, and he was at first disposed to think he had been mistaken He had for more than an hour past given up all expectation of the success of the ambush and was beginning io feel some what sleepy. However, lc went along i'll the direction from which the sound had seemed to come, stopping every now and then tO look and listen. but dtteCtinguoth- ing, and he was just OH the point uf lhun- doniug tlc search when he saw something dark lying near the foot uf thu, cliff He took 1T for a small rock ur fallen buwldcr, but as he did Hot remember having be- fore noticed anything of the kind in the place he came nearer to eNdinine.
 Until he stood within q yard of it nO suspicion as to what it really was enter ed his mind. Then in moment he knew it was q mans body, but even then he thought of tramp fallen asleep and not of Henry or of any one he knew. But when he noticed how the body lay-face downward, with one arm doubled under it-ho recognized death. and bending down he saw the curly hair that could only be Henry's. With that q fit of the horrors took possession of him. He does not know what he did, but thinks he shoCced in the dead mans ears as if to ; awaken him from that irrevocable sleep, and he felt for his heart and got his hand smeared with blood. He was thor oughly unnamed and ran hither and thither, not knowing what to do, but probably hoping to meet John. At length he reflected that I was in my rooms, and without further delay he made a straight line for my door,
 He was ghastly looking object when, the door being unfastened, I bade him come in. My first idea was that he had himself been attacked and had barely es- caped with his life. He was white in the face. hatless, his dress disordered and his hand bloody. He was shaking all over like a man chilled to the marrow, and he could not command his tongue to speak clearly. I asked him several ques- tions before getting any coherent or comprehensible reply. At last he said:
 Its murder-that's what it is! And somebody's got to swing for it. . 2. D.