“Blowed him right through, just as I tell you,” reiterated the narrator, without heeding the doubt George’s question implied.
“That sounds a little like Old Kentuck,” observed the colonel, coolly.
“Yes; but listen to the sequel, gentlemen,” resumed the landlord. “The murderer took the dead body in his arms, finding, to his horror, that it was an acquaintance with whom he had been drinking the day before; he took up the body, as I was saying, laid it out upon a table, and then went quietly to bed. In the morning he very honestly exhibited the corpse to all who passed his door, and told his story as I tell it to you. I had it from his own lips.”
“That beats Kentucky,” asseverated the colonel. For my own part, I believed the landlord was amusing himself at our expense.
“I don’t know about Kentucky,” observed the landlord; “I was never there in my life; but I do know that, when the dead man was buried, the man who killed him went to the funeral like any curious or indifferent spectator.”
This was too much. George rose from his chair, and began to be interested in a placard on the wall. “And you say this happened near here?” he slowly inquired; “perhaps, now, you could show us the very house?” he finished, dryly.
“Nothing easier. It’s only three miles back on the road you came. The blood-stain is plain, or was, on the threshold.”
We exchanged glances. This was the house where we halted to inquire our way. The colonel’s eyes dilated, but he said nothing.
“But was there no trial?” I asked.
“Trial? oh yes. After several days had run by, somebody thought of that; so one morning the slayer saddled his horse and rode over to the county-seat to inquire about it. He was tried at the next sessions, and acquitted. The judge charged justifiable homicide; that a man’s house is his fort; the jury did not leave their benches. By-the-bye, gentlemen, that is some of the man’s cider you are drinking.”