s. But
if, instead of using the word 'supernatural' to express what we do not
understand, we were simply to make use of the word 'inexplicable,' it
would be much better. At any rate, in the affair of which I am about to
tell you, it is especially the surrounding, preliminary circumstances
which impressed me. Here are the facts:

"I was, at that time, a judge at Ajaccio, a little white city on the
edge of a bay which is surrounded by high mountains.

"The majority of the cases which came up before me concerned vendettas.
There are some that are superb, dramatic, ferocious, heroic. We find
there the most beautiful causes for revenge of which one could
dream, enmities hundreds of years old, quieted for a time but never
extinguished; abominable stratagems, murders becoming massacres and
almost deeds of glory. For two years I heard of nothing but the price
of blood, of this terrible Corsican prejudice which compels revenge for
insults meted out to the offending person and all his descendants and
relatives. I had seen old men, children, cousins murdered; my head was
full of these stories.

"One day I learned that an Englishman had just hired a little villa at
the end of the bay for several years. He had brought with him a French
servant, whom he had engaged on the way at Marseilles.

"Soon this peculiar person, living alone, only going out to hunt and
fish, aroused a widespread interest. He never spoke to any one, never
went to the town, and every morning he would practice for an hour or so
with his revolver and rifle.

"Legends were built up around him. It was said that he was some high
personage, fleeing from his fatherland for political reasons; then
it was affirmed that he was in hiding after having committed some
abominable crime. Some particularly horrible circumstances were even
mentioned.

"In my judicial position I thought it necessary to get some information
about this man, but it was impossible to learn anything. He called
himself Sir John Rowell.

"I therefore had to be satisfied with watching him as closely as I
could, but I could see nothing suspicious about his actions.

"However, as rumors about him were growing and becoming more widespread,
I decided to try to see this stranger myself, and I began to hunt
regularly in the neighborhood of his grounds.

"For a long time I watched without finding an opportunity. At last it
came to me in the shape of a partridge which I shot and killed right in
front