132 FRUIT RANCHING. 



" Did you do that ? " he asked. Hut the stranger 

 made no answer. Tlicy gave him the water he craved, 

 and he went away. Mr. Habegard deputed his son, 

 a lad of sixteen, to follow the stranger, while he 

 himself, having asked a neighbour to go and stay 

 with Mrs. Habegard, pushed on to the C.P.R. ship- 

 yard, and from there telephoned to the Chief of the 

 Provincial Police. 



When the officer came, he and Mr. Habegard 

 walked back towards the house of the latter, and after 

 going about a quarter of a mile they came upon the 

 suicide lying in the middle of the road, weltering in 

 his blood, his head being nearly severed from his 

 body. He had made a second attack upon himself 

 with his penknife. 



The man was demented with hard drinking, and 

 laboured under delusions. First, he imagined he was 

 being dogged by the Black Hand organisation of the 

 Italian workmen ; then he believed that his life was 

 threatened by an assassin. It was while labouring 

 under this insane delusion that he destroved himself. 



