was, and the main instigator
and central figure of sundry violent encounters in the past, should have
failed to hit the mark at which he fired with his first shot or with his
second or with his third; and the second, a still greater wonder, was
that Dudley Stackpole, who perhaps never in his life had had for a
target a living thing, should have sped a bullet so squarely into the
heart of his victim at twenty yards or more. The first phenomenon might
perhaps be explained, they agreed, on the hypothesis that the mishap to
his brother coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning, unnerved
Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second was not in
anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer chance. The
fact remained that it was so, and the fact remained that it was strange.

By form of law Dudley Stackpole spent two days under arrest; but this
was a form, a legal fiction only. Actually he was at liberty from the
time he reached the courthouse that night, riding in the sheriff's buggy
with the sheriff and carrying poised on his knees a lighted lantern.
Afterwards it was to be recalled that when, alongside the sheriff, he
came out of his mill technically a prisoner he carried in his hand this
lantern, all trimmed of wick and burning, and that he held fast to it
through the six-mile ride to town. Afterwards, too, the circumstance was
to be coupled with multiplying circumstances to establish a state of
facts; but at the moment, in the excited state of mind of those present,
it passed unremarked and almost unnoticed. And he still held it in his
hand when, having been released under nominal bond and attended by
certain sympathizing friends, he walked across town from the county
building to his home on Clay Street. That fact, too, was subsequently
remembered and added to other details to make a finished sum of
deductive reasoning.

Already it was a foregone conclusion that the finding at the coroner's
inquest, to be held the next day, would absolve him; foregone, also,
that no prosecutor would press for his arraignment on charges and that
no grand jury would indict. So, soon all the evidence in hand was
conclusively on his side. He had been forced into a fight not of his own
choosing; an effort, which had failed, had been made to take him
unfairly from behind; he had fired in self-defense after having first
been fired upon; save for a quirk of fate operating in his favor, he
should have faced odds