‘I know it is. Tell me!’
‘They’ve took him in charge. It’s manslaughter.’
She made a shrill, wailing noise, something between a laugh and a cry. She gripped his arm tight. He knew that she would almost rather have touched any one on earth, but if she had not steadied herself she would have fallen.
‘Manslaughter. . . . Oh, God, my God! O Lord, have mercy on him, poor soul, and on us too. To think it should come to that! Oh, God . . . God!’
She clutched him again as though a wave were sweeping her legs from under her. Her bony fingers went into the muscle of Abner’s arm.
‘Now don’t take on, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Manslaughter’s a different thing from murder. Thank your luck for that!’
‘Don’t talk to me of luck!’ she cried. ‘Luck’s a heathen word. As a man sows so shall he reap. The hand of the Lord is heavy on me and my son. He hath forsaken the way of righteousness. Drink and strange women and all the abominations of the ungodly. All my prayers on him were wasted, young man, for I couldn’t keep his feet in the way. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. The Lord gave and the Lord hath took away, and now he stands before an earthly judge. I must go and see him.’
She detached herself from Abner’s arm, but a fit of trembling took her and made her cling to it again.
‘You’d best come home along of me, ma’am,’ he said. ‘They’ll have took him to Lesswardine by this time.’
She broke down into harsh sobs, crying childishly, and in between her sobbing he could hear her babble the same curious mixture of scriptural and unscriptural lamentation. She talked so wildly that he thought the old woman was going off her head. When she sobbed the jet ornaments on her bonnet danced.