An instant confused outcry rose. Alexander heard the term “Insane!” pronounced, as if in extenuation, by Sinnox' friend. The latter held the remaining, undischarged pistol out of reach; the other lay on the ground before Partridge Sinnox. Alexander's face was as grey as granite.
“That was the way he did it,” he unconsciously pronounced aloud.
He wondered slowly at the fact that he had been unhit. Then, with his hand in a pocket, he walked stiffly up to within a few feet of Sinnox, and produced a small, ugly derringer, with one blunt barrel on top of the other.
At the stunning report that followed, the vicious, stinging cloud of smoke, he seemed to wake. He felt himself propelled away from the vicinity of the bathhouse; low, excited exclamations beat upon his ears: “Absolutely justified!”
“Horrible attempt to murder!”
“Get his nigger and things. Best for the present.” He impatiently shook himself free from his small following.
“Did I kill him?” he demanded.
There was an affirmative silence.
In his wagon, driving rapidly toward Tubal Cain, a sudden sense of horror, weakness, overtook him; the roadside rocked beneath his vision.
“Mordecai,” he said to his coachman, “I—I shot a man, derringered him.”