FROM THE LIFE
where he had found it. He said he had found it under the corn-stalks in the barn. How had he known it was there? He said he hadn't known—he had "just guessed." His father cried: "Guessed! Did you steal that sickle?" And in the end he beat the boy hi a rage, shouting: "I'll teach you to steal! I'll teach you!"
Now, in the account of the murder, there was one detail that had interested and puzzled me. When the sheriff asked Ben Murdock how he had thought of looking for the shot-gun under that particular stone in the wood-lot, Murdock replied that he had "just guessed" that it was there. And when I heard old Heins's story of the finding of the sickle I was struck by the coincidence. I guessed something myself. And I began to verify it by gathering together every anecdote, every reminiscence, every bit of gossip that I could get about Ben Murdock anywhere. When I had enough to establish my theory of him I broached it to Mrs. Murdock one evening, after dinner, and I got it confirmed, first by what she told of him, then by what he admitted—with an odd scientific detachment, as if he were talking of some one else—and at last by what they both related together concerning the incredible incidents that led to their marriage.
8
As far as I can make out, the whole thing began in the autumn of 1893, when Murdock was about
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