The kaimakam of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the utmost vigor.  He therefore summoned the entire household of the dragoman, except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined.  As they were all under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to make a strict investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing the rigor of the Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a Mussulman, even unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to sit in the examination.  The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any one in the house to go to the konak for examination.  I then appeared before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house was accused.  There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the dragoman, with whom he had had litigation.  He declared that the shot came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination.  I asked him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that he had not.  Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun to be frightened at the responsibility he had assumed, and the man broke down and admitted that he might be mistaken, on which the kaimakam withdrew the charge.

I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally.  The refusal of the pasha to permit me to judge the case, as I had a right to do, he being my protégé, left me only the responsibility of the counsel for the prisoner, and I determined to acquit him if possible.  The bullet had, fortunately, gone through the boy and could not be found; and, as the wound, though through the lungs, was healing in a most satisfactory manner, and would leave no effects, I had no scruples in preventing a conviction that would have punished an involuntary offense by a terrible penalty, which all who know anything of a Turkish prison can anticipate.  The governor-general was very angry, and the kaimakam was severely reprimanded, but they could not help themselves.  My position under the capitulations was secure, but it made the hostility between the pasha and myself the more bitter.