On the following day my master came out of the house, about ten o'clock
in the forenoon, with an axe in one hand, and the fatal rifle, his
constant companion, with which he had perpetrated the atrocious deed on
the preceding day, in the other, and coming up to me, told me that he
was going to a certain spot in an adjoining wood to cut some timber for
paling, and that he desired I should come to him two hours after with
one of the cars or sledges in use on the farm, to carry home the cut
wood. Having said this, he went off, little dreaming of the fate that
awaited him.
At the time appointed I went with a horse and sledge to the wood, but
was much surprised to find that my master was not at the spot where he
said he would be;--a surprise which was not a little increased by
perceiving, from two or three felled sticks that lay around, that he had
been there, but had done little--so little, that he could not have been
occupied, as I calculated, for more than a quarter of an hour. Thinking,
however, that wherever he had gone he would speedily return, I sat down
to await him; but he came not. An entire hour elapsed, and still he did
not make his appearance. Beginning now to suspect that some accident had
happened him, I hurried home to inquire if they had seen or heard
anything of him there. They had not.
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