I merely suspected that I
might, from some things I had been told. When somebody took the
liberty of slashing at my back in a poker-room at Glencaid, and drove
the knife into Slavin by mistake, I chanced to catch a glimpse of the
hand on the hilt, and there was a scar on it. About fifteen years
before, I was acting as officer of the guard one night at Bethune. It
was a bright starlit night, you remember, and just as I turned the
corner of the old powder-house there came a sudden flash, a report, a
sharp cry. I sprang forward only to fall headlong over a dead body;
but in that flash I had seen the hand grasping the revolver, and there
was a scar on the back of it, a very peculiar scar. It chanced I had
the evening previous slightly quarrelled with the officer who was
killed; I was the only person known to be near at the time he was shot;
certain other circumstantial evidence was dug up, while Slavin and one
other--no, it was not you--gave some damaging, manufactured testimony
against me. As a result I was held guilty of murder in the second
degree, dismissed the army in disgrace, and sentenced to ten years'
imprisonment.
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