“Guess I’ll be ridin’ along over.”
“Well, you tell Joe that I’ll be there as quick as shank’s horses can carry me,” she said, turning away from the door, leaving Sol to gather what pleasure he was able out of the situation.
She lost no time in primping and preparing, but was on the road before Sol had gone a quarter of a mile.
Mrs. Newbolt cut across fields, arriving at the Chase farm almost as soon as Sol Greening did on his strawberry roan. The coroner had not come when she got there; Bill Frost allowed Joe to come down to the unused parlor of old Isom’s house to talk with her. Frost showed a disposition to linger within the room and hear what was said, but she pushed him out.
“I’ll not let him run off, Bill Frost,” said she. “If he’d wanted to run, if he’d had anything to run from, he could ’a’ gone last night, couldn’t he, you dunce?”
She closed the door, and no word of what passed between mother and son reached the outside of it, although Bill Frost strained his ear against it, listening.
When the coroner arrived in the middle of the forenoon he 135 found no difficulty in obtaining a jury to inquire into Isom’s death. The major and minor male inhabitants of the entire neighborhood were assembled there, every qualified man of them itching to sit on the jury. As the coroner had need of but six, and these being soon chosen, the others had no further pleasure to look forward to save the inquiry into the tragedy.
After examining the wound which caused Isom’s death, the coroner had ordered the body removed from the kitchen floor. The lamp was still burning on the table, and the coroner blew it out; the gold lay scattered on the floor where it had fallen, and he gathered it up and put it in the little sack.
When the coroner went to the parlor to convene the inquest, the crowd packed after him. Those who were not able to get into the room clustered in a bunch at the door, and protruded themselves in at the windows, silent and expectant.
Joe sat with his mother on one hand, Constable Frost on the other, and across the room was Ollie, wedged between fat Mrs. Sol Greening and her bony daughter-in-law, who claimed the office of ministrants on the ground of priority above all the gasping, sympathetic, and exclaiming females who had arrived after them.