With respectful carefulness it is laid at full length along the grass. The operators stoop silently over it—Sam Manly acting as the chief.
Directed by the judge, he makes an incision around the wound—that with the circle of extravasated blood.
The dissection is carried through the ribs, to the lungs underneath.
In the left lobe is discovered the thing searched for. Something firmer than flesh is touched by the probe—the point of a bowie-knife. It has the feel of a leaden bullet. It is one!
It is extracted; rubbed clean of its crimson coating; and submitted to the examination of the jury.
Despite the abrasion caused by the spirally-grooved bore of the barrel—despite an indentation where it came in contact with a creased rib—there is still discernible the outlines of a stamped crescent, and the letters C.C.
Oh! those tell-tale initials! There are some looking on who remember to have heard of them before. Some who can testify to that boast about a marked bullet—when the killing of the jaguar was contested!
He who made that boast has now reason to regret it!
“But where is he?”
The question is beginning to be asked.