There was no answer. He seemed to be asleep, he was breathing so hard. "Shaw! Shaw! did you fire that shot?" "Eh--eh?" said he, suddenly awakening; "me?--me fire? I have been asleep." Stanley's eye caught sight of his gun lying near him. He seized it--felt it--put his little finger down the barrel. The gun was warm; his finger was black from the burnt gunpowder. "What is this?" he asked, holding his finger up; "the gun is warm; the men tell me you fired." "Ah--yes," he replied, "I remember it. I dreamed I saw a thief pass my door, and I fired. Ah--yes--I forgot, I did fire. Why, what's the matter?" "Oh, nothing," said Stanley. "But I would advise you, in future, in order to avoid all suspicion, not to fire into my tent; or, at least, so near me. I might get hurt, you know, in which case ugly reports would get about, and that, perhaps, would be disagreeable, as you are probably aware. Good-night." All had their thoughts about this matter, but Stanley never uttered a word about it to any one until he met Livingstone. The doctor embodied his suspicions in the words: "He intended murder!" Mr. Livingstone was evidently right in his conjecture, and Mr. Stanley wrong about the intent of Shaw. In the first place, the coincidence in time between the punishment inflicted on Shaw and this extraordinary shot, in which the ball took the still more extraordinary direction of going through Stanley's tent, that is, to say the least, very difficult to explain. In the second place, his drowsy condition when questioned, and finally remembering so much as that he dreamed a thief was passing his door, _is more_ than suspicious. The fact that, as Mr. Stanley says, he could have had much better opportunities of killing him than this, we regard of very little weight. Opportunities that are absolutely _certain_ of success without suspicion or detection, are not so common as many suppose. Besides, an opportunity so good that the would-be murderer could desire nothing better might occur, and yet the shot or stab not prove fatal. In this case it doubtless never occurred to this man that any one would run his finger down his gun-barrel to see if it was hot from a recent discharge, while no man could tell, in the middle of the night, who fired the shot. It is true, that the wretch knew that the chances were against such a random fire proving fatal, but he knew it was better to take them than the almost certain discovery if he adopted any other method. If, for instance, he had in a lonely place fired at Stanley and the shot had not proved mortal, or if mortal, not immediately so, he well knew what would have been his fate, in the heart of Africa, where justice is administered without the form of law.