Submissively she accompanied him, her bosom rising and falling with a quickened rhythm. Too much had happened, one thing piling on another, for her to sort her thoughts or to attempt to understand things yet; and in her tossing state of mind she went at his gesture 67 as one follows a guide, or as a simple matter of course.
In her mental turmoil that last passionate utterance of the man played like a lambent flame. Tense, violent, spontaneous, it had come from the heart. What harsh lot he had lived and sufferings borne she could not even guess; but no man spoke with such unconscious bitterness who had not undergone pain and travail of spirit. His head was now turned a little towards her as they walked: she perceived him staring at the moonlit street, his lips compressed, his brows knit.
Then he glanced about at her, his face clearing. “Pay no attention to what I said,” he remarked. “I shouldn’t have let loose that way. Hello, what’s on now?”
Before them, and in front of the court house, was a packed crowd, people who had run forth at the sound of shots, augmented by those who had since arrived upon the scene. It was motionless.
“Stand back, stand back; don’t trample the body!” came Sheriff Madden’s voice in an angry order.
The crowd surged a little apart in the center.
“How do you know this dead man fired the first shot?” asked some one, vehemently.
The voices went lower so that Steele Weir and Janet Hosmer, who had paused at the edge of the throng, were able only to catch the tones.
“Who was that who questioned the sheriff?” Weir whispered.
“Mr. Burkhardt, I think. Sounded like him.”