p. Two
men might wear the same marvellous resemblance to each other, but no two
men could possibly do so to the extent of both being marked with that
peculiar double scar. That, at any rate, rendered the identity
complete, and beyond all room for doubt.

"The man with the double scar!" repeated Lambert to himself. "Holy
Moses! Am I drunk, or dreaming? No. It's him all right," passing his
hand over his eyes in a semi-dazed manner. "No two people could be so
extraordinarily alike, and Musgrave's is the sort of face that can't
have many `doubles' in the world. Now to see what they say about it."

Breathlessly he ran his eye down the column. The facts, as reported,
fully justified the opening definition of the crime as a sordid one, if
proved against the accused; and that there might be no mistake whatever
as to the identity of that critically situated personage with the
present assistant magistrate of Doppersdorp, he figured in the trial,
simply and without disguise, under the name of Roden Musgrave.

With dazed eyes, Lambert read on. Briefly summed up, the heads of the
affair were these. Two prospectors established themselves on a claim
together at Stillwell's Flat, a lonely spot beneath a northern spur of
the Black Hills. Their names were respectively, John Denton and Roden
Musgrave, and both were supposed to be Englishmen. One morning Denton
was found in the slab hut occupied by the pair, with his head cleft
nearly in twain, and beside him a bloodstained axe, and worse still, his
throat was cut from ear to ear. The wandering cattlemen, by whom the
discovery was made, described the place as like a slaughter-yard. A
ferocious and brutal crime, indeed! The motive? Robbery, of course.
The dead man, who was something of a gambler, was known to have taken
back from the nearest township upwards of four hundred dollars he had
won, and of this sum no trace could be found. The perpetrator?
Denton's partner, of course, who had disappeared.

Had disappeared to some purpose, too; for a long and vigorous search
failed to elicit the slightest clue to his whereabouts, and as the
searchers were mostly experienced plainsmen, it was concluded that he
was no longer above ground, had probably been killed or captured by the
Sioux, who were "bad" about there just at that time.

Then, a couple of months later, when the affair was beginning to fade
out of mind, possibly eclipsed by some other and similar tragedy such as
f