"'You come in here,' says he, and I went in.
"It was a terrible hog's nest, his front room was, but I paid no attention, for that's the way he lived. He sat down in a chair and made a motion with his hand for me to come near, and I did, and he took my hand and put it on his knee.
"'Feel that,' he says. And when I didn't know what he meant, nor care hardly, for I thought he might be in drink, he called out, in a queer voice—sharp it was, and pitiful—and says he: 'My legs are swelling. Hard as a rock.'
"Then I saw he was in a trouble of fear, and I asked him questions and he told me how long it had been coming on and how he went to the doctor down to the street, and the doctor told him he was a sick man, and how he would grow worse instead of better and could never take care of himself in the world, and the doctor would get him sent to the Poor Farm. That was his trouble. He did not want to go to the Farm, and when I told him it was the right way, he broke down and shook and cried and said he was afraid to go. Then he told me why. The boy must not read this until he is grown up, but when he is, he will hear there was a man killed over across the mountain: Cyrus Graves, a poor, good-for-nothing creature as it was said. (But God made him.) He was found by the side of the road, and it was thought he had words with a peddler that went along that day and never was found afterward. But some thought the authorities never tried so hard as they might to find the peddler, because Cyrus was such a poor good-for-nothing that he was well rid of, and if the peddler was found and not convicted he might come back and burn their barns. And when old Billy Jones was shaking there before me, I kept asking him what he was afraid of, and he said:
"'Will you promise not to tell?'
"I said I would. And he said:
"'It was me that killed Cyrus Graves. We were coming home together, and we had both had a drop too much, and we had words about something, I forget what. And which of us struck first I don't know, but I know I struck him and he fell pitch-polling down the side of the road into the gully and I went home and crawled into bed. And the next day they found him, and I said I came home across lots, and there was a man that met me and he said it was so and I was so far gone in liquor I never could have raised my head again that night, once I'd laid down and begun to sleep it off. But he never knew I did raise my head for I was not so well started as common and I went out again about ten to fill up. And it was then I met Cyrus Graves.'
"I told him there was but one thing for him to do. He must send for the sheriff and give himself up. But he cried out at that and said:
"'Look at my poor legs. Do you think a man with such legs as mine has got strength enough to be hung?'
"I told him he would not be hung. He was a very sick man, and there was no court of law in the world so unmerciful as not to take that into account. But he would not do it. He had not meant to kill Cyrus Graves, he said, and he would not die a murderer and known for one. And that was why he would not go to the Poor Farm. As he got sicker, he might be delirious or talk in his sleep. Rave, that was the word he used. He might rave. After he stopped speaking, I sat thinking it over, and he watched my face. He spoke first, and he spoke as if he could hardly wait to hear the answer and yet was obliged to hear it.