I then appeared before the kaimakam and demanded the evidence on which my house was accused.

There was none except that of the surgeon, who was a Catholic, and a bigoted enemy of the Greeks, and especially of the dragoman, with whom he had had litigation.

He declared that the shot came from the direction of the town, while the boy maintained the contrary; and as, in the direction from which the boy had come, there was a Mussulman festival, with much firing of guns, I suggested the possibility that the ball came, as the boy believed, from that direction, and put the surgeon to a severe cross-examination.

I asked him if he had ever seen a gunshot wound before, and he admitted that he had not.

Thereupon I denounced him to the kaimakam, who had begun to be frightened at the responsibility he had assumed, and the man broke down and admitted that he might be mistaken, on which the kaimakam withdrew the charge.
I knew perfectly well that the servant was guilty, but I knew, too, that for accidental wounding he would have been punished by indefinite confinement in a Turkish prison, as if he had shot the boy intentionally.