"Did you see her kill this man?"
"No, sir, I wasn't home. I got home in time to see 'em packin' him in the box. I hearn Patty tell the boys how she killed him. Oh! she was proud of it, sir, becaze she didn't have no help in it."
Half a dozen heads of constables, some of whom Hulda knew, leaned forward together to hear the witness, while others removed the unsavory remains. Mr. Clayton continued:
"How did she say she killed him?"
"She said he come to Joe's tavern with a borreyed hoss from East New Market, where he told the people he was buyin' niggers, and would take fifteen thousand dollars wuth if he could git 'em. He was follered out, an' Ebenezer Johnson got in ahead of him. They told him the tavern was full, an' he would be better tuk care of at a good woman's little farm close by. They made him think, she said, that a gentleman with much money wasn't allus safe at the tavern. Aunt Patty got him supper. He sit at the table after it a-pickin' of his teeth. She got her pistol an' went out in her garden a-hoein' of her flowers. Once she come up on him at the window to shoot, but he turned quick, an' she says to him: 'Oh, sir, I only want to see if you didn't need somethin' more.' 'No, no,' says he; 'I've made a rale good supper.' 'I loves my flowers,' Aunt Patty says, 'an' likes to hoe 'em at sundown, so they can sleep nice an' soft.' 'Do you?' says he; 'I reckon you're a kind woman.' He turned around agin an' begin to look over his pocket-book. She hoed an' hoed, an' hummed a little tune. All at once she slipped up, an' I heerd her say, 'Boys, I give it to him good, right in the back of the head, an' he fell on to the table, an' the water he had been drinkin' was red as currant wine.'"
"James Moore, I'll swear you next," the magistrate said to the new tenant of the farm; and this man proceeded to testify concerning the finding of the chest as he was ploughing in a wet spot where he had removed some brush.
Cy James, being recalled, gave testimony as to other buried bodies, chiefly of children slaughtered in wantonness or jealousy, or to avoid pursuit.
"Take this boy, Joe Neal," said Constable Hicks,[9] "and hold him fast."
"Goy!" said Clayton, with a terrible frown at Cy James, "we may have to hang him yet! Guilty knowledge of these crimes for so many years, and exposure at last only for a private resentment, constitute an accessory. Well for you, depraved young man, if you had possessed the principle of this young gentleman!"
The Senator placed his hand upon a sitting figure, and there arose in Hulda's sight the image of her lover, Levin Dennis.