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, dreading to carry their ghastly load into the town till such warning as was possible had been given.
Meantime Harry Scott, with his mind full of his mission, drove towards Cacouna.

He saw nothing of the people he passed, or who passed him; he saw only the sight he had just left, except when there rushed into his recollection for a moment the wedding-day scarcely six weeks ago, and the certainty of happiness which then seemed to wait both bride and bridegroom.

And now?
"Poor Bella!" broke from his lips, and he shuddered as he fancied, not Bella, but his cousin Magdalen crushed down in her youth by such a blow as this.