“‘I’d orter kill you like a snake, but I’ve always lived square, an’ the Lord helpin’ me, I’ll die that way, so I’ll give you an even chance. Get out your knife an’ fight, an’ remember that one of us has got to die right here.’
“Then he let him up, and they went at it. They was pretty evenly matched to look at ’em, but Jim thought of Milly dyin’ all alone, an’ fought like a tiger, an’ pretty soon he left the man that had come between ’em stiff an’ stark with a knife in his heart, an’ his white face a-glarin’ up at the sky.
“Then comes in the part of the story that I want you all to take for a warnin’, before you’ll be so quick to find any man guilty on nothin’ but circumstantial evidence. When the body was found, nobody ever thought of ’spicionin’ Jim, but everything pointed to another man as the one who had done the killin’. He’d sworn to kill the dead man; he was on the hunt for him when last seen, an’ he couldn’t prove no alibi. So they arrested him, and the first Jim heard of it he was summonsed on the jury that was to try him. Jim hadn’t never thought of giving himself up for a murder, for he knowed he’d fought and killed his enemy fair an’ square, an’ he was glad he done it. He didn’t see that it was any business of the law’s to interfere between ’em, and he didn’t like to drag in Milly’s name before the judge an’ jury an’ all the people who wouldn’t remember, like he did, when he was young an’ innocent. Even when he was summonsed, he didn’t have any notion but he would be cleared when they’d look into things some, an’ he made up his mind not to say nothin’ if he could help it.
“But when he got there, everything went so dead against the prisoner that if he hadn’t knowed he’d done the killin’ himself, he’d ’a’ thought sure he was guilty. He got kind of dazed at last, and didn’t seem to know nothin’ till he found himself in a room with the rest of the jury, an’ all eleven of ’em wanting to hang the man that he knowed was innocent. Then he came to his senses and voted against ’em, an’ when they asked him for his reasons, he told ’em the story I’ve been tellin’ you.”
Giles Conway stopped and gazed stolidly into the eyes of his audience, who had gathered around him till they hemmed him in on every side.
“An’ what did they do with him?” asked the foreman at last.
“I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “It ain’t decided yet, for Jack Wilder was the man that run off with Milly, an’ it was me that killed him.”
NOT TO BE OUTDONE IN POLITENESS.
A rich old man lying on his deathbed had assembled his three nephews to acquaint them with the manner in which he intended to dispose of his property.
“To you, my dear John, as you have always been a steady and dutiful nephew, I have left the sum of twenty thousand dollars.”