It had not been his intention to kill an unarmed man; the fatality of the blow had been an accident, but it was irrevocable, and it behooved him to look to the future. No one but the skipper of the _Aglaia_ could have known of his entrance upon the derelict, and if he had chanced to observe it, a word in his employee’s ear, that he had discovered the body there--murdered probably--and did not wish to be called as witness would be sufficient for the present; the skipper would have forgotten the whole incident before he had entered the first day’s run at sea in the log of the _Aglaia_. There was no reason to connect him with the tragedy except that the two were on the river the same day. He had retracted, and exonerated, and handsomely eaten all manner of humble pie, and it was to be supposed that relations had been established as friendly as could exist between rival claimants of an estate now to be adjudicated by the courts. He looked down at his hand. The wound that had so perversely bled showed only pallid lips, but no sign of red. He could not remember if he had thoroughly wiped the gory knife and began apprehensively to search his pockets. Not here--not there. He grew ghastly pale. His breath came quick in suffocating gasps as he realized the truth. He had failed to repossess himself of the knife at that supreme moment of tragedy. He had an illuminating recollection, as if he beheld the scene anew, that the blade had caught on some strong ligament or cartilage in the man’s throat and as the victim swayed and fell heavily he had not sought to secure it.