Still later in the evening he told several of the men that he was going to see Mr.Winter again, knowing that on certain evenings he was in the habit of staying down at the mill office until nearly half-past nine for special business.

The mills were undergoing repairs, and Mr.Winter was away from home more than usual.
That was the last that any one saw of the man until, about ten o'clock, some one going home past the mill office heard a man groaning at the foot of a new excavation at the end of the building, and climbing down discovered the man who had been to see Mr.Winter twice that afternoon.
He had a terrible gash in his head, and lived only a few minutes after he was discovered.

To the half-dozen men who stood over him in the saloon, where he had been carried, he had murmured the name of "Mr.
Winter," and had then expired.
A very little adds fuel to the brain of men already heated with rum and hatred.

The rumor spread like lightning that the wealthy mill-owner had killed one of the employees who had gone to see him peaceably and arrange matters for the men.

He had thrown him out of the office into one of the new mill excavations and left him there to die like a dog in a ditch.