"He'll never take brandy or anything else again," was the reply of Mr. Lowe. "He is dead."
"As I feared. Was as sure of it, in fact, as a non-professional man can well be. I believe that he died in the wood, a minute after the shot struck him."
"How did it happen?" asked the surgeon. "These young fellows are so careless!"
"I'll tell you all I know," said Mr. Barley. "We had been out shooting—he, I, and Heneage, with the two keepers. He and Heneage were not upon good terms; they were sour with each other as could be; had been cross and crabbed all day. Coming home, Heneage dropped us; whether to go forward, or to lag behind, I am unable to say. After that, we met Smith—as he can tell you, if you are going to his house. He stopped me about that right-of-common business, and began discussing what would be our better mode of proceeding against the fellows. Philip King, whom it did not interest, said he should go on, and Smith and I sat down on the bench outside the beer-shop, and called for a pint of cider. Half-an-hour we may have sat there, and then, I started for home through the wood, which cuts off the corner——"
"Philip King having gone forward, did you say?" interrupted the surgeon.
"Yes. I was nearly through the wood, when I heard a slight movement near me, and then a gun was fired. A terrible scream—the scream of a man, Lowe—succeeded in an opposite direction. I pushed through the trees, and saw Philip King. He had leaped up with the shot, and was then falling to the ground. I went to his succour, and asked who had done it. 'George Heneage,' was his answer. He had seen him raise his gun, take aim, and fire upon him."
Crouching down there on the matting, trembling though I was, an impulse prompted me to interrupt: to say that Mr. Edwin Barley's words went beyond the truth. All that Philip King had said was, that he saw George Heneage, saw him stand there. But fear was more powerful than impulse, and I remained silent. How could I dare contradict Mr. Edwin Barley?
"It must have been an accident," said Mr. Lowe. "Heneage must have aimed at a bird."
"There's no doubt that it was deliberate murder!" replied Mr. Edwin Barley. "My ward affirmed it to me with his dying lips. They were his own words. I expressed a doubt, as you are doing. 'It was Heneage,' he said; 'I tell it you with my dying lips.' A bad man!—a villain!" Mr. Barley emphatically added. "Another day or two, and I should have kicked him out of my house; I waited but a decent pretext."
"If he is that, why did you have him in it?" asked the surgeon.