Mink strove again to fix his mind on the testimony. Over and over it wandered. He only knew vaguely that his best friends were assuring the jury that his escapades were all in mirth and naught in malice, and instancing as indications of his deeper nature all the good turns he had ever done. He was a loose-handed fellow. He had no thrifty instincts, and perhaps because he valued lightly he gave freely. But the habit, such as it might be, was displayed to the jury under the guise of generosity.
The sunlight now slanting upon the walls had turned to a deep golden-red hue, for the early sunset was close at hand. Through a western window one might see the great vermilion sphere, begirt with a horizontal band of gray cloud, and sinking down into the dun-colored uncertainties about the horizon. The yellow hickory-tree beside the window showed through its thinning leaves the graceful symmetry of its black boughs. The room was dropping into a mellow duskiness, hardly obscurity, for as yet the soft light was sufficient to make all objects distinct in the midst of the gathering shadow,—the lawyers, the prisoner, the tousled heads of the audience, the attentive jury, the unwearied judge. Harshaw could even read his own handwriting as he looked at the list he held, and said, “Mr. Sheriff, call Alethea Sayles.”
“Alethea Sayles,” roared Mr. Sheriff at the door, as if Alethea Sayles were “beyond the seas” and hard of hearing besides, instead of waiting expectantly in the adjoining room, ten steps away.
As she came in, Mink was quick to notice the interest on Gwinnan’s face,—a sort of grave curiosity without any element of disrespect. She had a look in her eyes which Mink had often seen before, and which at once rebuked and angered him,—an expression of spiritual earnestness, of luminous purity; he had sneered at it as “trying to look pious.” She sat down in the witness-chair, and pushed back from her forehead her long bonnet; under its brown rim her golden hair showed in lustrous waves. Her saffron kerchief was knotted beneath her round chin. Her face was slightly flushed with the excitement of the moment, but she was not flurried, nor embarrassed, nor restless, nor uncouth, as many of her predecessors had been. Her deliberate, serious manner gave her an air of great value, and as she began to reply to the questions, her clear-voiced, soft drawl pervaded the court-room, singularly silent now, and there was a growing impression that hers was the important testimony for which all had been waiting. Harshaw’s manner served to confirm this. He was repressed, grave; only the quick, nervous glance of his opaque blue eye indicated his excitement; his questions were framed with the greatest care, and some of these were strange enough to excite comment. He asked her first to tell all that she knew about the party in the woods that night,—whether they were drinking and had access to any ample supply of liquor. She recited her adventure at Boke’s barn, and detailed the subsequent interview with the moonshiner and her refusal to keep his secret, throughout scarcely suppressed excitement in the court-room, for every man knew that with the words she courted martyrdom and took her life in her hands. Harshaw seemed to prize this attestation of her courage and her high sense of the sacred obligations of her oath, and dexterously contrived it so that the judge and the jury should be fully impressed with the crystalline purity of her moral sense, with her immovable determination to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He persevered in the examination of this point with great pertinacity, despite many stormy wrangles with the attorney for the State as to the pertinence and admissibility of the evidence, and the occasional ruling of the judge against him. Enough was secured, however, to prove that despite the limitations of the bonded still, Mink had had the opportunity to get drunk if he chose, and his habits were not those of a teetotaler.
The lawyer’s questions then became more inexplicable.
“When you discovered that you could give some testimony in this case, what did you do?”
Alethea pushed back her bonnet still further, and stared at him.
“Why, you-uns know,” she said.