Robert William Chambers

The Messenger Robert William Chambers

"The bullet entered here," said Max Fortin, and he placed his middle finger over a smooth hole exactly in the centre of the forehead. I sat down upon a mound of dry seaweed and unslung my fowling piece. The little chemist cautiously felt the edges of the shot-hole, first with his middle finger, then with his thumb."Let me see the skull again," said I. Max Fortin picked it up from the sod."It's like all the others," he observed. I nodded, without offering to take it from him. After a moment he thoughtfully replaced it upon the grass at my feet."It's like all the others," he repeated, wiping his glasses on his handkerchief. "I thought you might care to see one of the skulls, so I brought this over from the gravel pit. The men from Bannalec are digging yet. They ought to stop.""How many skulls are there altogether?" I inquired."They found thirty-eight skulls; there are thirty-nine noted in the list. They lie piled up in the gravel pit on the edge of Le Bihan's wheat field. The men are at work yet. Le Bihan is going to stop them."