He said he then changed his mind, and having become afraid to communicate the unhappy accident to any of the neighbors, he fled in great terror across the adjoining mountains, where he wandered nearly frantic until the approach of day-break the next morning.

He then felt himself seized with an uncontrollable anxiety to return to the scene of conflict, which he did, and found, not much to his surprise indeed, that the body had been removed, for he supposed at the time that Sullivan's friends must have brought it home.

This he declared was the truth, neither more nor less, and he concluded by solemnly stating, that he knew no more than the child unborn what had become of the body, or how it disappeared.

He also acknowledged that he was very much intoxicated at the time of the quarrel, and that were it not for the shock he received by perceiving that the man was dead, he thought he would not have had anything beyond a confused and indistinct recollection of the circumstance at all.
He admitted also that he had threatened Sullivan in the market, and followed him closely for the purpose of beating him, but maintained that the fatal blow was not given with an intention of taking his life.
The fact, on the contrary, that the body had been privately buried and stripped before interment, was corroborated by the circumstance of Sullivan's body-coat having been found the next morning in a torn and bloody state, together with his great coat and hat; but indeed, the impression upon the minds of many was, that Dalton's version of the circumstances was got up for the purpose of giving to what was looked upon as a deliberate assassination, the character of simple homicide or manslaughter, so as that he might escape the capital felony, and come off triumphantly by a short imprisonment.

The feeling against him too was strengthened and exasperated by the impetuous resentment with which he addressed himself to the Prophet and Rody Duncan, while giving their evidence, for it was not unreasonable to suppose that the man, who at his years, and in such awful circumstances, could threaten the lives of the witnesses against him, as he did, would not hesitate to commit, in a fit of that ungovernable passion that had made him remarkable through life, the very crime with which he stood charged through a similar act of blind and ferocious vengeance.