She had not to use it a second time. Kirby pulled the gentleman off his
horse, wounded in the thigh, and while dragging him to Countess Fanny to
crave her pardon, a shot intended for Kirby hit the poor gentleman in the
breast, and Kirby stretched him at his length, and Simon and he disarmed
the servant who had fired. One was insensible, one flying, and those two
on the ground. All in broad daylight; but so lonely is that spot,
nothing might have been heard of it, if at the end of the week the
postillion who had been bribed and threatened with terrible threats to
keep his tongue from wagging, had not begun to talk. So the scene of the
encounter was examined, and on one spot, carefully earthed over, blood-
marks were discovered in the green sand. People in the huts on the hill-
top, a quarter of a mile distant, spoke of having heard sounds of firing
while they were at breakfast, and a little boy named Tommy Wedger said he
saw a dead body go by in an open coach that morning; all bloody and
mournful. He had to appear before the magistrates, crying terribly, but
did not know the nature of an oath, and was dismissed. Time came when
the boy learned to swear, and he did, and that he had seen a beautiful
lady firing and killing men like pigeons and partridges; but that was
after Charles Dump, the postillion, had been telling the story.

Those who credited Charles Dump's veracity speculated on dozens of great
noblemen--and gentlemen known to be dying in love with Countess Fanny.
And this brings us to another family.

I do not say I know anything; I do but lay before you the evidence we
have to fix suspicion upon a notorious character, perfectly capable of
trying to thwart a man like Kirby, and with good reason to try, if she
had bewitched him to a consuming passion, as we are told.