The first phenomenon might
perhaps be explained, they agreed, on the hypothesis that the mishap to
his brother, coming at the very moment of the fight's beginning,
unnerved Jess and threw him out of stride, so to speak. But the second
was not in anywise to be explained excepting on the theory of sheer
chance. The fact remained that it was so, and the fact remained that it
was strange.
By form of law Dudley Stackpole spent two days under arrest; but this
was a form, a legal fiction only. Actually he was at liberty from the
time he reached the courthouse that night, riding in the sheriff's buggy
with the sheriff and carrying poised on his knees a lighted lantern.
Afterwards it was to be recalled that when, alongside the sheriff, he
came out of his mill technically a prisoner he carried in his hand this
lantern, all trimmed of wick and burning, and that he held fast to it
through the six-mile ride to town. Afterwards, too, the circumstance was
to be coupled with multiplying circumstances to establish a state of
facts; but at the moment, in the excited state of mind of those present,
it passed unremarked and almost unnoticed. And he still held it in his
hand when, having been released under nominal bond and attended by
certain sympathizing friends, he walked across town from the county
building to his home in Clay Street.
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