I don't believe in chance.

It was Colonel Gaylord who killed himself, and he commenced it fifty years ago." "It's God's own truth, Terry!" I said solemnly.
The sheriff had listened to Terry's words with an anxiously reminiscent air.

I wondered if he were reviewing his own political past, to see if by chance he also had unwittingly crushed a worm.

He raised his eyes to Terry's face with a gleam of admiration.
"You've been pretty clever, Mr.Patten, in finding out the truth about this crime," he acknowledged generously.

"But you couldn't have expected me to find out," he added, "for I didn't know any of the circumstances.
I had never even heard that such a man existed as that chicken thief--and as to there being two ghosts instead of one, there wasn't a suggestion of it brought out at the inquest." Terry looked at him with his usual slowly broadening smile.