Melville Davisson Post

“ As he elbowed his way through the crowd, he thought some one called out his name, 'Henry Fuget,' and instinctively he stopped, and turned around toward the stairway. But no one in the crowd coming down seemed to regard him, and he hurried away.
He was now alarmed, and he determined to leave the country at once. He returned with the farmer. That night, alone in the loft of the farmhouse, he packed his possessions into a bundle and sat down on the bed to wait until the family below him should be asleep. He did not cease to consider this extraordinary incident. ”

“ Every living thing seemed to have departed out of life. He thought of all the persons whom he had this day seen alert and alive, as now no better than dead men, lying unconscious, while the earth turned under them in this ghostly light. And it seemed to him a thing of no greater wonder, that the dead should appear or utter voices, than that these innumerable bodies, prone and motionless, should again reënter into life. ”

“ The stranger reflected. 'Yes,' he said. 'Pickens was dead then.'
Fuget's mouth remained open. A sense of disaster, complete and utter, descended on him. The dead man had carried out his terrible threat. He began to stammer, unconscious that he was completing his ruin. ”

“ Fuget remained all the afternoon seated on one of the benches. After the assembling of the grand jury, the judge began his charge. He reviewed the incidents of the assassination. Fuget found himself following these details. Under the speaker's dramatic touch the thing took on a more sinister aspect.
It could not avail the assassin that no human eye had seen him at his deadly work. By this act of violence he had involved himself with mysterious agencies that would not permit him to maintain his secret. It was in vain that human ingenuity strove against these influences. ”

“ Saatuel Pickens. (Seal)
The stranger looked up from the paper.
'When I heard that Pickens was dead,' he said, 'I came here immediately. The circuit court was sitting when I arrived. It occurred to me that the assassin might be present in this crowd of people. To determine that, I placed myself at the head of the stairway, and as the crowd was going out, I called the name. This man turned, and I knew then that he was Henry Fuget.'
Fuget sat with his hands on the arms of the chair, his big body thrown loosely forward, his eyes on the stranger. Slowly the thing came to him. ”

“ A thin wisp of smoke floated up from the rail fence; the horse, however, did not move; it remained standing with its bridle-rein lying on the earth. The cattle continued to approach. The man in the brush arose. The dead man had called out his name 'Henry Fuget.' Of that he was certain. ”

“ Presently an old man, riding a gray horse, entered the field from the road. When he came through the gate, tho man concealed in the brush cocked his rifle, laid the muzzle on a rail of the fence, and waited, with his jaw pressed against the stock. The old man rode leisurely across the field to the place where he had been accustomed to 'salt' his cattle. There he got down, opened a bag which, he carried across the pommel of his saddle, and began to drop handfuls of salt on the bare patches in the pasture. ”

“ Men plucked from death had testified to a supernal activity of the mind. And those who had watched had observed the dying to use words and gestures which indicated a sight and hearing beyond the capacities of life. ”

“ Fuget made some further comment, then he held up the pieces of the hoe.
'I come in to get another hoe,' he said. 'I broke the blade on a root.'
Then he went out to the log barn, selected a hoe from a number hanging in a crack of the logs, and returned to the cornfield.
He had now a sense of complete security. Even chance had helped. The turning of the old man in the act of death had diverted inquiry from the direction of the river, where some broken bushes might have indicated his hiding-place. He worked the remainder of the day in the cornfield. ”

“ I have come here to avoid him, but I fear that he will follow and kill me. Now, therefore, if I should be found dead, be it known that Henry Fuget is the assassin, and I direct my executor to expend the sum of one thousand dollars in order to bring him to the gallows. Fuget is to be known by a scar on the fleshy part of his right arm where he was shot in an attempt to escape from the penitentiary. The residue of my estate, both real and personal, I bequeath to my beloved daughter, Selina Pickens, now Mrs. ”