The corpse of the fisherman being laid out in the market-place, the officer, whose duty it was, proceeded to summon an inquest to inquire into the manner and cause of his death. The first witness summoned before this tribunal, was, of course, the wife of the deceased. She testified that a party of savages had on the preceding night entered their house, and after having cruelly murdered her husband, beaten herself, and bound her limbs with cords, had carried away all their fishing nets. That having placed these in a canoe, they laid her in it also, and paddled across the river--where they were met by another party of savages, about fifty in number, as she supposed, and while they were busily engaged in dividing the spoil, a gigantic man, with a face flaming like fire, and a sword as long as a fishing pole, had suddenly fallen upon the murderers, and quickly put them to flight, or the sword. That having thus conquered the whole horde, he had placed her in the boat again, and brought her to her own house, where he left her, and where she remained alone until morning, when she was found by Mr. Brian O'Reily, who happened to be coming that way.
Improbable as some parts of this story were, it met with a ready credence from nearly the whole of the multitude; no tale, having any relation to the Recluse, being so marvellous that they would not readily believe it. But in no one of the assembled listeners did it excite greater surprise than in Bacon himself. It is true, that he readily recognised in the whole invention the joint influence of whiskey, and O'Reily's ingenuity, but even to these he had not supposed that he should be indebted for such downright falsehoods in his behalf. Mrs. Jamieson, too, seemed firmly to believe all that she had testified. Under these circumstances he did not feel himself called upon to set the matter right at the expense of Virginia's feelings, and the inevitable defeat of the measures in which he was that very morning deeply engaged. How the Irishman was to manage his part of the narrative when called upon, as he certainly would be, and that so speedily that no time would be allowed to exchange a word with his master, Bacon could not divine. He knew right well that O'Reily was gifted with a strong tendency to the most outrageous and even ridiculous exaggeration, and that he would carry through whatever he should undertake to say, with wonderful shrewdness and imperturbable confidence; but how he was to make his story agree with that which he had put into the mouth of Mrs. Jamieson, and at the same time explain the wound upon his own face, and the contusion upon his head, without being guilty of some direct and palpable falsehood, was more than his master could imagine. At length Brian O'Reily was called to state what he knew touching the death of the fisherman. The first question propounded by the officer was, "Well, O'Reily, tell the jury how, and when you came to the house of the deceased."