A. “Tell me truly, did he make that charge against me?”
B. turns away and refuses to answer.
A. “I heard he had made that charge against me to you and threatened my life—is this true?”
No answer.
A. “I may then presume by your silence that it is true what I have asked you about?”
No reply.
Result of silence: A homicide, and the destruction of two families.
Asked later on why he did not nip the trouble in its incipiency by resorting to a white lie, B. answered with asperity that A. had put his own construction upon his silence and refusal to have anything whatever to say in their controversy. On the stand B. admitted that the third party in question had not told him what A. had inquired about. Ergo: B. was morally responsible for the homicide, as much so as the man that pulled the trigger.
Reverting to the circumstance which completed the breach between French and Eversole: A certain friend (?) of French conveyed information to Eversole that he, French, sought his life.