One morning, two years ago, Cutter went
into the hardware store and bought a pistol,
saying he was going to shoot a dog, and add-
ing that he "thought he would take a shot at
an old cat while he was about it." (Here the
children interrupted Rudolph's narrative by
smothered giggles.)

Cutter went out behind the hardware store,
put up a target, practiced for an hour or so,
and then went home. At six o'clock that
evening, when several men were passing the
Cutter house on their way home to supper,
they heard a pistol shot. They paused and
were looking doubtfully at one another, when
another shot came crashing through an up-
stairs window. They ran into the house and
found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in his up-
stairs bedroom, with his throat torn open,
bleeding on a roll of sheets he had placed be-
side his head.

"Walk in, gentlemen," he said weakly. "I
am alive, you see, and competent. You are
witnesses that I have survived my wife. You
will find her in her own room. Please make
your examination at once, so that there will be
no mistake."

One of the neighbors telephoned for a doc-

[[408]]

p407 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p408w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p409

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