The coroner looked up from his little red-leather note-book.
“Joe Newbolt, step over here and be sworn,” said he. 139
Joe crossed over to the witness-chair, picking his way through feet and legs. As he turned, facing the coroner, his hand upraised, Ollie looked at him steadily, her fingers fluttering and twining.
Twelve hours had made a woeful change in her. She was as gaunt as a suckling she-hound, an old terror lay lurking in her young eyes. For one hour of dread is worse than a year of weeping. One may grieve, honestly and deeply, without wearing away the cheeks or burning out the heart, for there is a soft sorrow which lies upon the soul like a deadening mist upon the autumn fields. But there is no worry without waste. One day of it will burn more of the fuel of human life than a decade of placid sorrow.
How much would he tell? Would it be all–the story of the caress in the kitchen door, the orchard’s secret, the attempt to run away from Isom–or would he shield her in some manner? If he should tell all, there sat an audience ready to snatch the tale and carry it away, and spread it abroad. Then disgrace would follow, pitiless and driving, and Morgan was not there to bear her away from it, or to mitigate its sting.
Bill Frost edged over and stood behind the witness chair. His act gave the audience a thrill. “He’s under arrest!” they whispered, sending it from ear to ear. Most of them had known it before, but there was something so full and satisfying in the words. Not once before in years had there been occasion to use them; it might be years again before another opportunity presented. They had an official sound, a sound of adventure and desperation. And so they whispered them, neighbor nodding to neighbor in deep understanding as it went round the room, like a pass-word in secret conclave: “He’s under arrest!”
There was nobody present to advise Joe of his rights. He had been accused of the crime and taken into custody, yet 140 they were calling on him now to give evidence which might be used against him. If he had any doubt about the legality of the proceeding, he was too certain of the outcome of the inquiry to hesitate or demur. There was not a shadow of doubt in his mind that his neighbors, men who had known him all his life, and his father before him, would acquit him of all blame in the matter and set him free. They would believe him, assuredly. Therefore, he answered cheerfully when the coroner put the usual questions concerning age and nativity. Then the coroner leaned back in his chair.
“Now, Joe, tell the jury just how it happened,” said he.
The jury looked up with a little start of guilt at the coroner’s reference to itself, presenting a great deal of whiskers and shocks of untrimmed hair, together with some reddening of the face. For the jury had been following the movements of the coroner’s stenographer, as if it, also, expected to catch him in the trick of it that would incriminate him and send him to the penitentiary for life.
“I’d been down to the barn and out by the gate, looking around,” said Joe. There he paused.