A Fair Fraud — page 238: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

CHAPTER XVII THE verdict brought in at the close of the inquest was ‘ Accidental Death,’ with a strong expression of censure on the part of the coroner concerning. the folly—almost amount- ing, indeed, to wickedness — of permitting a gentleman, whose carelessness and ignorance in the use df firearms had led to such fatal consequences, to join in the sport of shooting pheasants. ‘It would be better,’ added the coroner, severely, ‘that men who have no expericnce in the handling of loaded guns should refrain f.om using them altogether.’ Mr Grigson, senior, who had felt himself constrained by the concensus of public opinion to offer to pay the funeral expenses of the un- fortunate victim of his son’s carelessness, made a mental resolution that the young man should never have another chance of bringing so much trouble and annoyance upon him again. But the offender himself, in the delightful reaction from the abject terror he had been enduring ever since the accident had occurred, became positively hilarious, more especially after he 227 GORMGIOO