“She ain’t seen him,” said Sol; “I wouldn’t let her come down. She may not be in no condition to look on a muss like that, her a young woman and only married a little while.”
Bill agreed on that, as he agreed on every hypothesis which Sol propounded out of his wisdom, now that his official heat had been raised.
“If I hadn’t got here when I did he’d ’a’ skinned out with all of that money,” said Sol. “He was standin’ there with his hat in his hand, all ready to scoop it up.”
“How’d he come to go after me?” asked Bill.
“Well, folks don’t always do things on their own accord,” said Sol, giving Bill an unmistakable look.
“Oh, that was the way of it,” nodded Bill. “I thought it was funny if he––”
“He knowed he didn’t have a ghost of a chance to git away between me and you,” said Sol.
Morning came, and with it rode Sol’s son to fetch the coroner.
Sol had established himself in the case so that he would lose very little glory in the day’s revelations, and there remained one pleasant duty yet which he proposed to take upon himself. That was nothing less than carrying the news 130 of the tragedy and Joe’s arrest to Mrs. Newbolt in her lonely home at the foot of the hill.
Sol’s son spread the news as he rode through the thin morning to the county-seat, drawing up at barn-yard gates, hailing the neighbors on the way to their fields, pouring the amazing story into the avid ears of all who met him. Sol carried the story in the opposite direction, trotting his horse along full of leisurely importance and the enjoyment of the distinction which had fallen on him through his early connection with the strange event. When they heard it, men turned back from their fields and hastened to the Chase farm, to peer through the kitchen window and shock their toil-blunted senses in the horror of the scene.