"And it would be such a pity that, eh, colonel?" laughed Lee, as he ran forward. "Have with you then."
"Great heaven!" he cried, stumbling in his haste head foremost across the body of Goodenough; "what have we here? Sheriff Goodenough!" he continued in horrified amazement, as he turned his lantern light on the pale still face, and perceived the pool of blood it lay weltering in. "Dead? Murdered?"
Rumsey shrugged his shoulders with an air of cool indifference.
"Man!" shouted Lee, turning on Rumsey. "What is the meaning of this?"
"Pooh! nonsense!" replied Rumsey, as well as his almost spent breath permitted him. "Dead! Well, like enough; but murdered—Here, hi! lend a hand, can't you?"
Saved for the gallows.
Lawrence complied; but the hand he placed at Rumsey's disposal was no very gentle one, and he hauled him to the floor like a sack of bones. "Speak, man!" he cried.
"Well, give me breathing time," answered Rumsey, shaking himself; and then, glancing askance at the dark mass upon the floor, he growled sulkily, "What is it? What do you want to know? Murdered? Well, killing's no murder, I take it, when a man is driven to it in self-defence."
"Self-defence!"
"Ay. There's no telling where I mightn't be now, if this quarrelsome fellow here, had got the best of me. Don't you see the dagger there in his hand?"