Mose was a small man, but he was long-armed and wirey, doubtless far stronger than he looked; besides, he had been armed, and the nature of his weapon was clear.

The floor of the cave was strewn with scores of broken stalactites; nothing could have made a more formidable weapon than one of these long pieces of jagged stone used as a club.
As to the motive for the crime, who could tell what went on in the slow workings of his mind?
The Colonel had struck him more than once--unjustly, I did not doubt--and though he seemed at the moment to take it meekly, might he not have been merely biding his time?
His final revenge may have been the outcome of many hoarded grievances that no one knew existed.

The fellow was more than half insane.

What more likely than that he had attacked his master in a fit of animal passion; and then, terrified at the result, escaped to the woods?
That seemed to me the only plausible explanation.
No facts had come out concerning the ha'nt or the robbery, and I do not think that either was connected in the public mind with the murder.

But to my mind the death of Colonel Gaylord was but the climax of the long series of events which commenced on the night of my arrival with the slight and ludicrous episode of the stolen roast chicken.