In the case now before us, _She-fo-pao_, being armed with a musquet, goes to watch the corn, hears a noise in the fields, and calls aloud, but, receiving no answer, suspects it to proceed from thieves or wild beasts, and fires the gun, by which _Vang-yung-man_ was wounded, and is now dead. But in the deposition given in by the defendant, the declaration that he saw the shadow of some person does not accord with the suspicion afterwards expressed, that the noise arose from wild beasts. If, in truth, he distinguished traces of a man, at the time of his calling out, notwithstanding that the violence of the wind prevented his hearing the reply, _She-fo-pao_ had ocular proof of the reality of the person from the shadow he had seen. Continuing our investigation, we have further to notice, that when _She-fo-pao_ took his station in order to guard the middle ground, _Vang-yung-man_ was engaged in watching his fields in a similar manner, and would have occasion to go near the limits of the middle ground in his way to his own farm, and which could not be far removed from the path leading to the middle ground; on which account it behoved _She-fo-pao_ to hail the person repeatedly, previous to the firing of the gun, whose effect would be instantaneous, and occasion the death of the unknown person from whom the sound proceeded. _She-fo-pao_ not having repeatedly hailed the person from whom the noise had arisen to disturb him, and proceeding to the last extremity upon the first impulse or alarm, are grounds for suspecting that there exists a fallacy and disguise in the testimony given in this affair, in which case, a sentence conformable to the law against homicide, committed in an affray, would afford a punishment unequal and inadequate to the possible aggravation of the offence. On the other hand, it would appear, in confirmation of his statement, that these fields were, according to the custom of the neighbouring villages, understood to be guarded at that time in a the manner aforesaid, and that circumstance proving true, the accident that followed might still be considered solely as the effect of apprehension of wild beasts by night, inducing the accused to fire towards fields or tenements, so as to wound a man mortally by the mischance.