22
THE BATTALION,
as lived quite across the town from the railroad. His
friends explained his uneasy manner as a result of a natur
al nervousness, increased on this occasion by the horror of
so dreadful an accusation.
Strang-ely enough, however, a blood-stained hatchet
was found in the kitchen of Elias Murray. He stated, and
his wife corrobrated the statement, that it had been used
some days before to chop off the head of a fowl that was
cooked for dinner. Dr. Bates and the professor of chemis
try at the university, who had just returned from a trip to
New Orleans, examined the bloodstains on the hatchet,
and swore positively, or rather said they were willing to
swear in court, that the blood was not human blood.
At about 3 o’clock on the morning of the seventh of
July, Basil Goodrum died.
In spite of the declaration of experts that the blood on
the hatchet was not Goodrum’s, suspicion rested most
strongly now on Elias Murray. When the coroner’s in
quest was held he was of course brought in for examina
tion.
This man had shifted from trade to trade, unsuccessful
in all, until at last he had bought a piece of ground on a
hillside just beyond the town and had taken to raising
grapes. He was doing very well in that business; but it
was remembered against him that he had spent his wife’s
and his sister-in-law’s fortune before the vineyard venture.
He had been brought into the room where Goodrum lay
the day before his death, and there asked if he knew him.
To this he had replied at first that he did not, and immedi-