FROM THE LIFE
of a trodden branch sounded from the laurel-bushes. Ben sprang from his seat in a passion of angry despair, snatched off his hat and flung it at his feet, plucked from his pocket a bright metal object that flashed in the sunlight, and put it to his mouth in both hands, holding it as if it were a flask from which he was to drink. Then a little cloud of yellowish-blue smoke exploded from it and blew him backward, stiffly, over the stern of the boat—and his face was still distorted with an expression of anger as he fell, but his eyes, meeting the blaze of sunlight, looked surprised, startled, as if he had suddenly realized what he had done.
And when the man from the landing burst through the laurel-bushes—with his warrant for the arrest of the president of the wrecked Danville National Bank—he found an old farmer with a pair of oars still grasped stiffly in his hands, sitting in a coffin-shaped punt, staring, horrified, at a spot of blood and bubbles on the water a few yards from shore—with a small fortune in bank bills lying in plain view at his feet.
