's house of cards, crumpled in the
dust. His discovery could not damage his enemy now. Still, as he read
the final report of the trial and its result, he thought he saw light.
For the acquittal, under the circumstances, and obtained as it had been,
amounted to a verdict of "not proven" far more than to one of "not
guilty."

And the way in which it had been arrived at was ingenious. The evidence
against the accused was merely presumptive; indeed, it was no evidence
at all. He admitted having quarrelled with the deceased and left him,
but totally denied the murder. Moreover, he had satisfactorily
explained his movements since. Why had he not returned when wanted?
Ah, well now. It was not completely outside knowledge that innocent men
had before then been sacrificed at times of popular clamour. But there
were two cards which the lawyer for the defence held in his hands, and
upon which he mainly relied. The axe-blow which had slain the murdered
man had split his head nearly in two, yet his throat had been cut. Now
the latter act was quite superfluous, was, in fact, an act of deliberate
and cold-blooded barbarity, to which his client, even if he did the
killing, would hardly be likely to bring himself. The fact of the dead
man's throat being cut pointed to murderers of a very different type.
Everybody knew that the tribal mark of the Sioux was cutting the throat,
which never failed to distinguish the victims of their barbarity. Well,
the Sioux were "bad" around there just then, and Stillwell's Flat was a
lonely place; in fact, it was in following the trail of several Indians
who had run off some of their steers, that those very cattlemen had
happened upon the spot. True, the man was not scalped, but possibly the
Indian murderers had been alarmed, and decamped before completing that
revolting essential to their barbarous work.

But the trump card of all, and one most skilfully played by the
advocate, was this:--His client had served in the recent Indian war,
might not the murderers have marked him out as the object of their
vengeance, and have mistaken his partner for him? He had been one of
that little band of heroes, under the command of General Forsyth, who
only the previous year had "stood off" overwhelming forces of the enemy;
and who with no other rampart than their own dead horses, and no other
food than the putrefying flesh of the animals, had managed to hold their
own for seven days against the fierces