human
I was awakened next morning by the news that Halloway and his wife had both been murdered the night before. I at once galloped over to his place, and was one of the first to get there. It was a horrible sight. Halloway had evidently been waylaid and killed by a blow of an axe just as he was entering his yard gate, and then the door of the house had been broken open and his wife had been killed, after which Halloway's body had been dragged into the house, and the house had been fired with the intention of making it appear that the house had burned by accident. But the house had not burned down. By one of those inexplicable fatalities, the fire, after catching and burning half of two walls, had gone out. It was a terrible sight, and the room looked like a shambles. Halloway had evidently been caught unawares while leaning over his gate. The back of his head had been crushed in with the eye of an axe, and he had died instantly. The pleasant thought which was in his mind at the instant—perhaps of the greeting that always awaited him on the click of his latch; perhaps of his success that day; perhaps of my mother's kindness to him when he was a boy—was yet on his face, stamped there indelibly by the blow that killed him. There he lay, face upward, as the murderer had thrown him after bringing him in, stretched out his full length on the floor, with his quiet face upturned, looking in that throng of excited, awe-stricken men, just what he had said he was: a man of peace. His wife, on the other hand, wore a terrified look on her face. There had been a terrible struggle. She had lived to taste the bitterness of death, before it took her.