done, there was time for another thought--the murderer?

Perhaps every one present had already in his heart convicted one person,
but even in the excitement of horror some one had sense enough to say,
"There ought to be a search made--there may be some trace."

Nor was it difficult to find a trace. At a very little distance from the
spot itself there appeared marks upon the grass as if footsteps, heavy,
and wet with dark-coloured moisture, had trodden there. They followed
the tracks, and came to a place where many low bushes growing close
together formed a kind of thicket. Almost buried in this, the figure of
a man lying upon the ground filled them for a moment with a new
consternation--but this was no lifeless body. They dragged it out--a
squalid, miserable object, with bleared eyes and red disfigured face, a
drunken, half-imbecile Indian.

He was so overcome, indeed, with the heavy sleep of intoxication that
even when they made him stand up, he seemed neither to see anything nor
to hear the questions of the men who knew him and called him by his
name. But there were answers to their questions in another shape than
that of words. The hatchet that lay beside him and the stains of blood
still wet upon his ragged clothing were conclusive evidence.

They led him away, after the little procession which had gone on with
the dray and its load, but he neither resisted, nor indeed spoke at all.
He seemed not to understand what was going on; and the men about him
were for the moment too full of horror, and of that awe which belongs to
the sight of death, to be much disposed to question him.

So they took murderer and victim both to the sawmill, and there waited,