He was requested to open the letters, read and show them. But he waived this courtesy, asking the coroner to open and read them to the jury. They were of no moment, both on matters of casual business, and Mr. Alan Selwyn was dismissed; the coroner blandly regretting that, in view of his malady, he had been required to come out in so chilly a rain.
Notwithstanding his composure he was in some haste to be gone. He went quickly through the crowd, drawing down his hat over his brow, and deftly buttoning his overcoat across his chest and throat. He had reached his horse, and had placed one foot in the stirrup, when, chancing to glance back over his shoulder, he saw Narcissa Hanway's white, flowerlike face, her bonnet pushed far back on her tawny yellow hair, both arms outstretched in a gesture of negation and repulsion toward the apartment where the jury sat, while a dark-haired, slow man urged her forward, one hand on her shoulder, and the old mountain woman followed with insistence and encouragement. He hesitated for a moment; then putting spurs to his horse, he rode off swiftly through the slanting lines of rain.
III.
A sense of helplessness in the hands of fate is in some sort conducive to courage. Doubtless many an act of valor which has won the world's applause was precipitated in a degree by desperation and the lack of an alternative. The appearance of stolidity with which the cluster of witnesses—those whose testimony was yet to be given as well as those who had told the little they knew—noted the uncontrolled agitation, the wild eyes, the hysteric sobs, with which Narcissa Hanway was ushered into the contracted apartment where the inquest was in progress, had no correlative calmness of mind or heart. What haphazard accusation might not result from her fear, or her desire to shield another, or the mere undisciplined horror of the place and the fact! When one dreads the sheer possibilities, the extremes of terror are reached. More than one of the bearded, unkempt, hardy mountaineers, trudging back and forth in the sheltered space beneath the loft, steadily chewing their quids of tobacco and eying the rain, would have fled incontinently, had there been any place to run to out of reach of the constable, who was particularly brisk to-day, participating in exercises of so unusual an interest. The girl's brother, standing beside the door after she had passed within, was unconscious of a certain keen covert scrutiny of which he was the subject. He had a square determined face, dark hair, slow gray eyes, and a tall powerful frame; he held his head downward, his hand on the door, his even teeth set in the intensity of his effort to distinguish the voices within. There had been some secret speculation as to whether the man were altogether unknown to the brother and sister, such deep feeling she had evinced, such coercion he had exerted to induce her to give her testimony. Still, the girl was a mere slip of a thing, unused to horrors; and as to recalcitrant witnesses, they all knew the jail had a welcome for the silent until such time as they might find a voice. Nevertheless, though his urgency had been in the stead of the constable's stronger measures, they eyed him askance as he stood and sought to listen, with his hand on the door. The old woman turned around, her arms falling to her sides with a sort of flounce of triumph, her eyes twinkling beneath the shining spectacles set upon her brow among the limp ruffles of her thrust-back sunbonnet, a laugh of satisfaction widening her wrinkled face. "Thar now!" she chuckled, "Nar'sa jes' set it down she wouldn't testify, an' crossed her heart an' hoped she'd fall dead fust. But, Ben, we beat her that time!" and she chuckled anew.
The man answered not a word, and listened to the tumult within.
It is seldom, doubtless, that the patience of a coroner's jury is subjected to so strong a strain. But the information which had so far been elicited was hardly more than the bare circumstance which the body presented,—a man had ridden here, a stranger, and he was dead. If the girl knew more than this, it would necessitate some care in the examination to secure the facts. She was young, singularly willful and irresponsible, and evidently overcome by grief, or fear, or simply horror. When she was asked to look at the face of the stranger, she only caught a glimpse of it, as if by accident, and turned away, pulling her white bonnet down over her face, and declaring that she would not. "I hev viewed him wunst, an' I won't look at him again," she protested, with a burst of sobs.
"Now set down in this cheer, daughter, an' tell us what ye know about it all,—easy an' quiet," said the coroner in a soothing, paternal strain.
"Oh, nuthin', nuthin'!" exclaimed the girl, throwing herself into the chair in the attitude of an abandonment of grief.
"Air ye cryin' 'kase ye war 'quainted with him ennywise?" demanded one of the jurymen, with a quickening interest. He was a neighbor; that is, counting as propinquity a distance of ten miles.
The girl lifted her head suddenly. "I never seen him till yestiddy," she protested steadily. "I be a heap apter ter weep 'kase my 'quaintances ain't dead!" She gave him a composed, sarcastic smile, then fell to laughing and crying together.