who was reading in the house all the time we were gone, had heard
nothing and knew nothing about it; but, on examining the rifle, I
found that some one had tried to wipe it out and had left a rag
sticking half way down, the barrel. This pointed to a solution, and an
investigation made the whole thing clear. The dragoman's man-servant
had taken the gun out on the balcony which looked out on the port,
and fired a shot at a white stone on the edge of the wall, in the
direction of the village where the boy was hit.

The _kaimakam_ of Retimo sent an express to Canea to ask Ismael what
he should do, and received reply to prosecute the affair with the
utmost vigor. He therefore summoned the entire household of the
dragoman, except him and myself, to the konak, to be examined. As they
were all under my protection I refused to send them, but offered to
make a strict investigation and tell him the result; but, knowing
the rigor of the Turkish law against a Christian who had wounded a
Mussulman, even unintentionally, I insisted on being the magistrate to
sit in the examination. The pasha declined my offer, and I forbade any
one in the house to go to the konak for examination. I then appeared
before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house
was accused. There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a
Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the
dragoman, with whom he had had litigation. He declared that the shot
came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the
contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there
was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested
the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that
direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination. I asked
him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that
he had not. Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun