Then I got the blow.

I heard it from the loafers around the little post-office first, but it dazed me so I wouldn't believe it till I borrowed the paper and read the whole story, with the type dancing and leaping before me.

It took some hours for it to seep in, even after that, and for years I recalled every word of the damned lie as if it had been branded on me with hot irons.

They called it a shocking crime, the most brutal murder California had ever known, and in the head-lines was my name in letters that struck me between the eyes like a hammer.
Mrs.Dan Bennett had been foully murdered by me, in a fit of sudden jealousy, and I had disappeared with the baby! The husband had returned unexpectedly to find her dying, so he said, but too far gone to call for help, and with barely sufficient strength to tell him who did it and how! Then the paper went on with the tale of my courting her, and her turning me down for Bennett.

It told how I had gone off alone up into the hills, turning into a bear that nobody, man or child, could approach.