So far, I had to acknowledge, the evidence against him appeared overwhelming. A motive was supplied in the fact that the Colonel's death would leave him his own master and a rich man. The well-known fact of their frequent quarrels, coupled with Radnor's fierce temper and somewhat revengeful disposition, was a very strong point in his disfavor; added to this, the suspicious circumstances of the day of the tragedy--the fact that he was not with the rest of the party when the crime must have been committed, the alleged print of his boots and the finding of the match box, his subsequent perturbed condition--everything pointed to him as the author of the crime. It was a most convincing chain of circumstantial evidence. Considering the data that had come to light, there seemed to be only one alternative, and that was that Cat-Eye Mose had committed the murder. I clung tenaciously to this belief; but I found, in the absence of any further proof or any conceivable motive, that few people shared it with me. The marks of his bare feet proved conclusively that he had been, in whatever capacity, an active participator in the struggle. "He was there to aid his master," the sheriff affirmed, "and being a witness to the crime, it was necessary to put him out of the way." "Why hide the body of one and not the other?" I asked. "To throw suspicion on Mose." This was the universal opinion; no one, from the beginning, would listen to a word against Mose. In his case, as well as in Radnor's, the past was speaking. Through all his life, they said, he had faithfully loved and served the Colonel, and if necessity required, he would willingly have died for him. But for myself, I continued to believe in the face of all opposition, that Mose was guilty. It was more a matter of feeling with me than of reasoning. I had always been suspicious of the fellow; a man with eyes like that was capable of anything. The objection which the sheriff raised that Colonel Gaylord was both larger and stronger than Mose and could easily have overcome him, proved nothing to my mind. Mose was a small man, but he was long-armed and wirey, doubtless far stronger than he looked; besides, he had been armed, and the nature of his weapon was clear. The floor of the cave was strewn with scores of broken stalactites; nothing could have made a more formidable weapon than one of these long pieces of jagged stone used as a club.