Friends and well-wishers volunteered to accompany him upon the chase, for they foresaw brisk doings. But he declined their company. Folklore, descending from his generation to ours, has it that he said this was his own business and he preferred handling it alone in his own way. He did add, however, that on overtaking the fugitive it was his intention, as an earnest or token of his displeasure, to eat that Injun's liver raw. Some versions say he mentioned liver rare, but the commonly accepted legend has it that the word used was _raw_. With this he put the spur to his steed's flank and was soon but a mere moving speck in the distance. Now there was never offered any direct proof that our hero, in pursuance of his plan for teaching the Indian a lesson, actually did do with regard to the latter's liver what he had promised the bystanders he would do; moreover, touching on this detail he ever thereafter maintained a steadfast and unbreakable silence. In lieu of corroborative testimony by unbiased witnesses as to the act itself, we have only these two things to judge by: First, that when Mr. Watkins returned in the dusk of the same day he was wearing upon his face a well-fed, not to say satiated, expression, yet had started forth that morning with no store of provisions; and second, that on being found in a deceased state some days later, the Piute, who when last previously seen had with him two of Mr. Watkin's pintos and one liver of his own, was now shy all three. By these facts a strong presumptive case having been made out, Mr. Watkins was thenceforth known not as Ezekiel or Emanuel, or whatever his original first name had been, but as Liver-Eating, or among friends by the affectionate diminutive of Liv for short. This I would regard as a typical instance of the value of a chain of good circumstantial evidence, with no essential link lacking. Direct testimony could hardly have been more satisfactory, all things considered; and yet direct testimony is the best sort there is, in the law courts and out. On the other hand, hearsay evidence is viewed legally and often by the layman with suspicion; in most causes of action being barred out altogether. Nevertheless, it is a phase of the fattish man's perversity that, rejecting the direct, the circumstantial and the circumferential testimony which abounds about him, he too often awaits confirmation of his growing suspicions at the hands of outsiders and bystanders before he is willing openly to admit that condition of fatness which for long has been patent to the most casual observer.