r, or volume,
or, at least, strike the reader over the head with a sandbag to force
him to stop and think. In common fairness one ought to stop here and
count a hundred or get up and walk round a block, or, at any rate,
picture to oneself Peter Pupkin lying on the floor of the bank,
motionless, his arms distended, the revolver still grasped in his hand.
But I must go on.

By half-past seven on the following morning it was known all over
Mariposa that Peter Pupkin the junior teller of the Exchange had been
shot dead by a bank robber in the vault of the building. It was known
also that Gillis, the caretaker, had been shot and killed at the foot of
the stairs, and that the robber had made off with fifty thousand dollars
in currency; that he had left a trail of blood on the sidewalk and that
the men were out tracking him with bloodhounds in the great swamps to
the north of the town.

This, I say, and it is important to note it, was what they knew at
half-past seven. Of course as each hour went past they learned more
and more. At eight o'clock it was known that Pupkin was not dead, but
dangerously wounded in the lungs. At eight-thirty it was known that he
was not shot in the lungs, but that the ball had traversed the pit of
his stomach.

At nine o'clock it was learned that the pit of Pupkin's stomach was all
right, but that the bullet had struck his right ear and carried it away.
Finally it was learned that his ear had not exactly been carried away,
that is, not precisely removed by the bullet, but that it had grazed
Pupkin's head in such a way that it had stunned him, and if it had been
an inch or two more to the left it might have reached his brain. This,
of course, was just as good as being killed from the point of view of
public interest.

Indeed, by nine o'clock Pupkin could be himself seen on the Main Street
with a great bandage sideways on his head, pointing out the traces of
the robber. Gillis, the caretaker, too, it was known by eight, had not
been killed. He had been shot through the brain, but whether the injury
was serious or not was only a matter of conjecture. In fact, by ten
o'clock it was understood that the bullet from the robber's second shot
had grazed the side of the caretaker's head, but as far as could be
known his brain was just as before. I should add that the first report
about the bloodstains and the swamp and the bloodhounds turned out to
be inaccurate. The stains may have been blood, but as t