“So that was the reason you didn’t tell it before?”
“I war feared ter tell ennybody but the lawyer, ’kase Reuben’s enemies mought fix it somehows so ’twouldn’t be no ’count.”
“Well, what was this you wanted to tell?”
Her face was growing dim among the glooms. The dusky figures within the bar, the shadowy judge, the indistinct mass of the crowd, the great windows,—indefinite gray squares,—seemed for a moment the darker because of a dull suffusion of yellow light in the halls, falling through the doorways, and heralding the coming of the lamps.
“I wanted to tell that I seen Tad Simpkins arter they ’lowed he war drownded.”
There was absolute silence for a moment; then, wild commotion. Men were talking loudly to each other in the crowd. The lights came in with a flare. Several of the jury requested to have the answer repeated. The attorney-general began to ask a question, left off, and bent his head to his notes. A sudden shrill, quaking voice pierced the tumult.
“I know it air a true word!” cried the old miller, clasping his hands. “God would not deliver my soul ter hell. I fund him in my youth, but my age air the age o’ the backslider. He would not desert me, though! An’ I hev been gin ter do my good works o’ faith anew. I’ll find my boy. I’ll make amends. I’ll”——
The sheriff’s insistence, “Silence in court!” had no coercion for him. He began to sob and cry aloud, and to call the idiot’s name, and was finally taken by the deputy and led out of the court-room, the officer promising to come and let him know as soon as Alethea had disclosed the boy’s whereabouts.
Mink glanced around him in triumph. His lip curved. A brilliant elation shone in his eyes. He tossed back, with an arrogant gesture, his long, red, curling hair, gilded by the lamplight to a brighter hue. He joyed to see the discomfiture of his detractors, who had given their testimony with all the gusto that appertains to stamping on a man, literally and metaphorically, who is already down. He noted, too, the surprise and pleasure in Ben Doaks’s eye, in Jerry Price’s freckled, ugly face, and, strangely enough, Peter Rood looked transfigured. His surly scowl was gone, as if it had never existed. His swarthy face was irradiated by his great excited eyes. A flush dyed his cheek. His breath came in quick gasps. He seemed inordinately relieved, delighted. What! because the forlorn little idiot was not dead? Mink could not understand it. With not even a surmise to explain the demonstration, he stared in suddenly renewed gravity at his old enemy on the jury.