"Ask me a dozen," said Hartsook, looking more like a king than a criminal.
"Well, then, Mr. Hartsook. You need not answer unless you choose; but what prompted you to take the direction you did in your walk on that evening?"
This shot brought Ralph down. To answer this question truly would attach to friendless Hannah Thomson some of the disgrace that now belonged to him.
"I decline to answer," said Ralph.
"Of course, I do not want the prisoner to criminate himself," said Bronson significantly.
During this last passage Bud had come in, but, to Ralph's disappointment he remained near the door, talking to Walter Johnson, who had come with him. The magistrates put their heads together to fix the amount of bail, and, as they differed, talked for some minutes. Small now for the first time thought best to make a move in his own proper person. He could hardly have been afraid of Ralph's acquittal. He may have been a little anxious at the manner in which he had been mentioned, and at the significant look of Ralph, and he probably meant to excite indignation enough against the school-master to break the force of his speech, and secure the lynching of the prisoner, chiefly by people outside his gang. He rose and asked the court in gentlest tones to hear him. He had no personal interest in this trial, except his interest in the welfare of his old schoolmate, Mr. Hartsook. He was grieved and disappointed to find the evidence against him so damaging and he would not for the world add a feather to it, if it were not that his own name had been twice alluded to by the defendant, and by his friend, and perhaps his confederate, John Pearson. He was prepared to swear that he was not over in Flat Creek the night of the robbery later than ten o'clock, and while the statements of the two persons alluded to, whether maliciously intended or not, could not implicate him at all, he thought perhaps this lack of veracity in their statements might be of weight in determining some other points. He therefore suggested—he could only suggest, as he was not a party to the case in any way—that his student, Mr. Walter Johnson, be called to testify as to his—Dr. Small's—exact whereabouts on the night in question. They were together in his office until two, when he went to the tavern and went to bed.
Squire Hawkins, having adjusted his teeth, his wig, and his glass eye, thanked Dr. Small for a suggestion so valuable, and thought best to put John Pearson under arrest before proceeding further. Mr. Pearson was therefore arrested, and was heard to mutter something about a "passel of thieves," when the court warned him to be quiet.
Walter Johnson was then called. But before giving his testimony, I must crave the reader's patience while I go back to some things which happened nearly a week before and which will serve to make it intelligible.
FOOTNOTES:
[28] This form, bagonet, is not in the vocabularies, but it was spoken as I have written it. The Century Dictionary gives bagnet, and Halliwell and Wright both give baginet with the g soft apparently, though neither the one nor the other is very explicit in distinguishing transcriptions from old authors from phonetic spellings of dialect forms. I fancy that this bagonet is impossible as a corruption of bayonet, and that it points to some other derivation of that word than the doubtful one from Bayonne.