It is easy to imagine how, in so small a community as Cacouna, the news of a frightful crime committed in their very midst, would spread from mouth to mouth.

How groups of listeners would gather in the streets, round every man who had anything of the story to tell.

How the country people who had been in town when the murdered man was brought home, hurried along the solitary roads with a kind of terror upon them, and carried the news out to the villages and farms around.

As to the murderer, there was a strange confusion in the minds of many of the townspeople.

Doctor Morton's feud with Clarkson had been so well known that, if there had been any signs of premeditation or design about the crime, suspicion would have turned naturally upon him.