"Your name, young lady?"
"Fluella, sir; and this lady at my side is Mrs. Mark Elwood, who comes only as my friend."
"You understand the usages of courts, I conclude; and, if so, will now receive the oath, and go on to tell what you know relative to the crime for which, you have doubtless heard, the prisoner here is arraigned."
At once raising her hand, she was sworn, and proceeded directly to state that part of the transaction she had witnessed on the lake, which the hunter, in the conversation she found means to have with him while waiting to be taken into court, had advised her was all that would be important as evidence in the case.
Gaut Gurley, the alarmed prisoner, who at first had appeared greatly relieved on finding that the announced witness was not the reanimated young Elwood, as he had feared, now seemed utterly at fault to conjecture what either of these women could know of his crime. But the moment the maiden, whom he had seen the previous year, and regarded with jealous dislike, as the possible rival of his daughter, revealed herself to his view, his looks grew dark and suspicious; and when she commenced by mentioning, as she did at the outset, that she was on a boat excursion along the western shore of the Maguntic, on the well-remembered day when he consummated his long cherished atrocity, he seemed to comprehend the drift of what was coming, and his eyes fastened on her with the livid glare of a tiger; while those demoniac flashes, before noted as the usual percursor of hellish intent with him, began to burn up and play over his contracting countenance.
But these suspicious indications had escaped the notice of all,—even of the watchful hunter, whose looks, with those of the rest, were for the moment hanging, with intense interest, on the speaking lips of the fair witness. And she proceeded uninterrupted, till, having described the position in the thicket on shore, in which she was standing, as Mark Elwood, followed by Gaut Gurley, both of whom she recognized, came along, she, nerving herself for the task, raised her voice, and said:
"I distinctly saw Mr. Elwood fall, convulsed in death,—heard the fatal shot, and instantly traced it to Gaut, before he had taken his smoking rifle from his shoulder,—this same man who now—"
When, as she was uttering the last words, and turning to the prisoner, she stopped short, recoiled, and uttered a loud shriek of terror. And, the next instant, the deafening report of a pistol burst from the corner where the prisoner was sitting, filling the room with smoke, and bringing every man to his feet, in the amazement and alarm that seized all at the sudden outbreak.
There was a dead pause for a moment; and then was heard the sudden rush of men, the sharp, brief struggle, and the heavy fall of the grappled prisoner, as he was borne overpowered to the floor.
"Thank God!" exclaimed the hunter, the first to reach the bewildered maiden, and ascertain what had befell from this fiendish attempt to take her life simply because she was instrumental in bringing a wretch to justice,—"thank God, she is unhurt! The bullet has only cut the dress on her side, and passed into the wall beyond."