He had fancied it only a fragment of
the rock falling, and had not the curiosity to leave his occupation and
go so far to investigate the nature of a circumstance seemingly of so
little significance.
Thus it came about that the inquisition of the coroner's jury resulted in
a verdict of death by accident. It was supposed that the little child's
body was crushed indistinguishably in the mangled mass of horse and man,
themselves scarcely to be disintegrated in the fall from so stupendous a
height. The big white beaver hat of the child was found floating on the
surface of a deep pool hard by, half quagmire, half quicksand, and would
in itself have sufficed to dispel any doubts of his fate, had doubt been
entertained. The burial was accomplished as best might be, and the
dolorous incident seemed at an end. But throughout the dry, soft Indian
summer the little boy's jaunty red coat swung in the wind, unseen,
unheeded, on the upper boughs of a tree in the valley, where it had
chanced to lodge when the treacherous Copenny had cast it forth from the
bluff above to justify the hypothesis of the fall of the little fellow
from those awful heights.
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