"Judge Ostrander, I never thought differently till after the trial—till after the earth closed over my poor husband's remains. That was why I could say nothing in his defence—why I did not believe him when he declared that he had left his stick behind him when he ran up the bluff after Reuther. The tree he pointed out as the one against which he had stood it, was far behind the place where I saw this advancing shadow. Even the oath he made to me of his innocence at the last interview we held in prison did not impress me at the time as truthful. But later, when it was all over, when the disgrace of his death and the necessity of seeking a home elsewhere drove me into selling the tavern and all its effects, I found something which changed my mind in this regard, and made me confident that I had done my husband a great injustice."
"You found? What do you mean by that? What could you have found?"
"His peaked cap lying in a corner of the garret. He had not worn it that day."
The judge stared. She repeated her statement, and with more emphasis:
"He had not worn it that day; for when he came back to be hustled off again by the crowd, he was without hat of any kind, and he never returned again to his home—you know that, judge. I had seen the shadow of some other man approaching Dark Hollow. WHOSE, I AM IN THIS TOWN NOW TO FIND OUT."
XI
"I WILL THINK ABOUT IT"
Judge Ostrander was a man of keen perception, quick to grasp an idea, quick to form an opinion. But his mind acted slowly to-night. Deborah Scoville wondered at the blankness of his gaze and the slow way in which he seemed to take in this astounding fact.
At last he found voice and with it gave some evidence of his usual acumen.
"Madam, a shadow is an uncertain foundation on which to build such an edifice as you plan. How do you know that the fact you mention was coincident with the crime? Mr. Etheridge's body was not found till after dark. A dozen men might have come down that path with or without sticks before he reached the bridge and fell a victim to the assault which laid him low."
"I thought the time was pretty clearly settled by the hour he left your house. The sun had not set when he turned your corner on his way home. So several people said who saw him. Besides—"