"What does ye aim ter do with thet thar paper?" he demanded.
"Hit's my confession—all wrote out ... an' ready ter be swore ter," she told him. "Ef ye won't heed me, I've got ter give hit ter ther jedge—in open co'te."
But the man who gave orders to judges shook his head.
"Hit won't avail ye," he assured her with a voice into which the flinty quality had returned. "Hit's jest evidence in Ken's favour.... Hit don't jedgmatically sottle nothin'. I reckon bein' a woman ye figgers ye kin come cl'ar whilst Ken would be shore ter hang—but I'll see thet nothin' don't come of thet."
"Does ye mean"—Sally was already so ghost pale that she could not turn paler—"Does ye mean they'll go on an' hang him anyhow?"
Will Turk's head came back and his shoulders straightened.
"Mayhap they will—ef I bids 'em to," he retorted.
"Listen at me, Will," the woman cried out in such an anguish of beseeching that even her present auditor could not escape the need of obeying. "Listen at me because ye knows in yore heart I hain't lyin'. I'm tellin' ther whole truth thet I was afeared ter tell afore. I let him take ther blame because I was skeered—an' because ther baby was goin' ter be borned. I hain't nuver been no liar, Will, an' I hain't one now!"
The man had half turned his back as if in final denial of her plea, yet now, after a momentary pause, he turned back again and she thought that there was something like a glimmer of relenting back of his gruffness as he gave curt permission: "Go on, then, I'm hearkenin'."
Late into that night they talked, but it was the woman who said most while the man listened in non-committal taciturnity. His memory flashed disturbingly back to the boyhood days and testified for the supplicant with reminders of occasional outcroppings of cruelty in his brother as a child. That outward guise of suavity which men had known in John Turk he knew for a coat under which had been worn another and harsher garment of self-will.