man on Indian Run who would have touched him."

"Mr. Cary, had he any enemy?"

"He had one. He sits yonder. You have heard his testimony."

The court room murmured again. The old rivalry between Lewis Rand and
Ludwell Cary, the antagonism of years, and the fact of a duel were
sufficiently in men's minds--but what of it all? The duel was a year
gone by; political animosities in Virginia might be, and often were,
bitter enough, but they led no further than to such a meeting. The
coroner looked disturbed. The murmur was followed by a curious hush; but
if for an instant an idea was poised in the air of the court room, it
did not descend, it was banished as preposterous. The moment's silence
was broken by Lewis Rand. From his place at the side of the room he
spoke with a grave simplicity and straightforwardness, characteristic
and impressive, familiar to most there who had heard him before now, in
this court room, on questions of life and death. "Everything is to be
pardoned to Mr. Fairfax Cary's most natural grief. My testimony, sir, is
as I gave it."

The coroner's voice broke in upon a deep murmur of assent. "I presume,
Mr. Cary, that you bring no accusation against Mr. Rand?"

Fairfax Cary looked from under the hand with which, as he sat, he shaded
his brow. "I have, here and now, no sufficient proof whereon to base
accusation of any man. I will only say that I shall seek such proof."

A little longer, and the proceedings were over. The crowd dispersed,
unsatisfied, hungry for further details and hazardous of solutions. The
better class went home, but others hung long about the Court House yard,
reading the notices pasted upon the Court House doors, the "WHEREAS upon
the seventh day of September and on the river road where it is crossed
by Indian Run"--commenting upon the rewards offered, relating this or
that story of the Greenwood Carys, and recalling every murder in
Albemarle since the Revolution. "Dole was shot down like that, three
years ago, in North Garden--but then, Fitch was suspected from the
first. Fitch had been heard to swear he'd do it, and they knew, too, it
was his gun, and a child had seen him come and go. Lewis Rand was for
the State. Don't you remember the speech he made? No; Tom Mocket made
it, but Mr. Rand wrote it! Either way it hung Fitch. Curious, wasn't it,
that passage between Mr. Rand and Fairfax Cary? D'ye suppose he
thought--d'ye suppose Fairfax Cary thought--"

"It isn't what a man t