Cartridges, as used by sportsmen with guns which load at the muzzle, are packages of shot compact, and rammed down in a body. Some of them have spiral cases of the finest wire, covered round with paper; others, used for shorter distance, have only cylinders of paper to enclose the shot. The interstices between the shots are solidified with sawdust. The only use of these things is—for they save little time in loading—to kill our brother bipeds, or quadrupeds, if such we are, at a longer distance. The shots are prevented from scattering so widely as they love to do, when freed from the barrelʼs repression. They fly in a closer body, their expansive instincts being checked, when first they leave the muzzle, by the constraint of the case and the tightness of their brotherhood. But it sometimes happens, mainly with _wire_–cartridges, that the shot can never burst its cerements, and flies in the compass of a slug, until it meets an obstacle. When this is so, the quarry escapes; unless a bullet so aimed would have hit it. This non–expansion is called, in good English, the “balling” of the cartridge. And those which are used for the longest distance, and for wild–fowl shooting—green cartridges, as they are called, containing larger shot—are especially apt to ball. Dr. Gall was aware, of course, that no one beating for a woodcock would think of putting a green cartridge into his gun at all; but it seemed very likely indeed that Cradock might have used a blue one, for a longer shot with his left barrel; and the blue ones, having wire round them, sometimes ball, though not so often as their verdant brothers. It only remains to be said that when a cartridge balls, it flies with the force, as well as in the compass, of a bullet. With three drachms of powder behind it, it will cut a hole at forty yards through a two–inch deal. Whether it were a balled cartridge or a charge of loose shot at six feet distance, was the momentous issue. In the former case, there would be fair reason to set it down as an accident; for the place where Cradock had first been seen was thirty yards from Clayton; and he might so have shot him thence, in the dusk, and through the thick of the covert. But if that poor boy had died from a common charge of shot, “Murder” was the only verdict true men could return on the evidence set before them. For Cradock must have fired wilfully at the open throat of his brother, then flown to the hedge and acted horror when he saw John Rosedew. Where was Cradock? The jury trembled, and so did Rufus Hutton. The coroner repeated the question, although he had no right to do it, at that stage of the evidence. “Since it occurred he has not been seen”, whispered Rufus Hutton at last, knowing how men grow impatient and evil when unanswered.