have since had occasion to modify this opinion somewhat), that
the battery was not strong enough to kill a healthy man, and that
Griscelli had died of nervous shock and fear acting on a weak heart. In
this view the jury concurred and returned a verdict of accidental death,
with the (informal) rider that it "served him right." The chairman, a
burly farmer, warmly congratulated me on my ingenuity, and regretted that
he had not "one of them things" at every window in his house.

So far so good; but, unfortunately, a London paper which lived on
sensation, and happened at the moment to be in want of a new one, took the
matter up. One of the editor's jackals came down to Kingscote, and there
and elsewhere picked up a few facts concerning Mr. Fortescue's antecedents
and habits, which he served up to his readers in a highly spiced and
amazingly mendacious article, entitled "old Fortescue and his Strange
Fortunes." But the sting of the article was in its tail. The writer threw
doubt on the justice of the verdict. It remained to be proved, he said,
that Griscelli was a burglar, and his death accidental. And even burglars
had their rights. The law assumed them to be innocent until they were
proved to be guilty, and it could be permitted neither to Mr. Fortescue
nor to any other man to take people's lives, merely because he suspected
them of an intention to come in by the window instead of the door. By what
right, he asked, did Mr. Fortescue place on his window an appliance as
dangerous as forked lightning, and as deadly as dynamite? What was the
difference between magnetized bars in a window and spring-guns on a
game-preserve? In conclusion, the writer demanded a searching
investigation into the circumstances attending Guiseppe Griscelli's death,
likewise the immediate passing of an act of Parliament forbidding, under
heavy penalties, the use of magnetic batteries as a defence against
supposed burglars.

This effusion (which he read in a marked copy of the paper obligingly
forwarded by the enterprising editor) put Mr. Fortescue in a terrible
passion, which made him, for a moment, look younger than ever I had seen
him look before. The outrage rekindled the fire of his youth; he seemed to
grow taller, his eyes glowed with anger, and, had the enterprising editor
been present, he would have passed a very bad quarter of an hour.

"The fellow who wrote this is worse than a murderer!" he exclaimed. "I'll
shoot him--unless he prefers co