n his very heart he jogged;
and soon the fray commenced. There was very little parleying between
determined men.

Simon Fettle was a plain kindly creature without a thought of malice, who
kept his master's accounts. He fired the first shot at the foremost man,
as he related in after days, 'to reduce the odds.' Kirby said to Countess
Fanny, just to comfort her, never so much as imagining she would be
afraid, 'The worst will be a bloody shirt for Simon to mangle,' for they
had been arranging to live cheaply in a cottage on the Continent, and
Simon Fettle to do the washing. She could not help laughing outright. But
when the Old Buccaneer was down striding in the battle, she took a pistol
and descended likewise; and she used it, too, and loaded again.

She had not to use it a second time. Kirby pulled the gentleman off his
horse, wounded in the thigh, and while dragging him to Countess Fanny to
crave her pardon, a shot intended for Kirby hit the poor gentleman in the
breast, and Kirby stretched him at his length, and Simon and he disarmed
the servant who had fired. One was insensible, one flying, and those two
on the ground. All in broad daylight; but so lonely is that spot, nothing
might have been heard of it, if at the end of the week the postillion who
had been bribed and threatened with terrible threats to keep his tongue
from wagging, had not begun to talk. So the scene of the encounter was
examined, and on one spot, carefully earthed over, blood-marks were
discovered in the green sand. People in the huts on the hill-top, a
quarter of a mile distant, spoke of having heard sounds of firing while
they were at breakfast, and a little boy named Tommy Wedger said he saw a
dead body go by in an open coach that morning; all bloody and mournful.
He had to appear before the magistrates, crying terribly, but did not
know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed. Time came when the boy
learned to swear, and he did, and that he had seen a beautiful lady
firing and killing men like pigeons and partridges; but that was after
Charles Dump, the postillion, had been telling the story.

Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity speculated on dozens of great
noblemen--and gentlemen known to be dying in love with Countess Fanny.
And this brings us to another family.

I do not say I know anything; I do but lay before you the evidence we
have to fix suspicion upon a notorious character, perfectly capable of
trying to thwart a man like K