"'I'm a dead man!' cried he; as well as the rattle in his throat would let him. 'God be merciful to me! My poor wife, my poor children!'"
Bob paused; he gasped for breath, and the sweat stood in large drops upon his forehead. He gazed wildly round the room. The judge himself looked very pale. I tried to rise, but sank back in my chair. Without the table I believe I should have fallen to the ground.
There was a gloomy pause of some moments' duration. At last the judge broke silence.
"A hard, hard case!" said he. "Father, mother, children, all at one blow. Bob, you are a bad fellow; a very bad fellow; a great villain!"
"A great villain," groaned Bob. "The ball was gone right through his breast."
"Perhaps your gun went off by accident," said the judge anxiously. "Perhaps it was his own ball."
Bob shook his head.
"I see him now, judge, as plain as can be, when he said, 'Don't force me to do you a mischief. We might both be sorry for it.' But I pulled the trigger. His bullet is still in his rifle.
"When I saw him lie dead before me, I can't tell you what I felt. It warn't the first I had sent to his account; but yet I would have given all the purses and money in the world to have had him alive agin. I must have dragged him under the Patriarch, and dug a grave with my huntin' knife; for I found him there afterwards."
"You found him there?" repeated the judge.