I left him after that and went home.  Jenny was friendly enough and Tom Bond was so meek and mild that butter wouldn’t have melted in his mouth.  So the time passed till Wednesday and the footman was off for his afternoon out; and at my usual hour, forbidding Jenny to seek me that afternoon, I went my way.  We were quiet for the minute with a week between guns at Oakshotts.  A still evening with the reds in the sky and frost promising.  My thoughts were difficult, because the more I turned over what Owlet had told me, the more mad it sounded; but I couldn’t get any line on Bond and I couldn’t get any line on Jenny, though I had a fancy she was pretty miserable and inclining a bit more towards me.  For that walk, however, I concentrated on self-preservation, because if the man really thought to slay me, ’twas up to me to get in first, of course.  So I went mighty wary when I came to the trees, and being blessed with amazing good long sight, used it.  And I also pricked my ears and had my gun in my pocket and my hand upon it.  A shot I heard, but it was dull and far off and didn’t sound no ways different from the usual shots you always heard in Oakshotts.  Then, after going without any event for half a mile or more, I saw the woodstack ahead on my way, and that minded me of Owlet’s warning and the chance it might be true.  A very handy place for any man to lie in wait for an enemy on the woodman’s path; so I stopped, crept off into the undergrowth and reckoned to come up behind the stack, so as if there was to be any surprises, I’d give ’em.  But the surprise was mine notwithstanding.  I stalked the stack as cautious as though it had been an elephant, and crept up inch by inch through the laurels with my blood warm and my senses very much alive and my revolver at full cock.  And at last I was parted from the danger-point by no more than a screen of leaves.  But not a soul I saw, and I was just pushing out with a good bit of relief in my mind, when my eyes fell on the ground and I marked a man lying so still as a snake behind the pile with his head not a yard from the path that ran alongside of it!  He was waiting and watching; but he’d not heard me; so there lay Tom Bond sure enough, looking for me to come along; and there stood I behind him not ten yards distant.  The dusk was coming down by now and the wind sighing in the naked branches overhead, and I didn’t see no use in wasting time.  I couldn’t have wished to get him in a more awkward position for himself; so I covered him with my revolver and I stepped out quick as lightning, and afore he could move, my muzzle was at his ear.

“Now, you damned scoundrel,” I said, “the boot is on the other leg, I reckon!”

But not a muscle of the man twitched, and then I got the horror of my life, for Tom Bond was dead.  He lay flat on his face with his hands stretched afore him, and a revolver, the daps of mine, had fallen from his hand and dropped a foot away from it.  And, looking close, I saw a big dabble of blood about him, that had come from his body and his mouth.