“Bill Frost, you ain’t got as much sense as you was born with!” said she. She patted Joe’s shoulder, which was as near an approach to tenderness as he ever remembered her to make.
Constable Frost fell into consultation with his adjutant, Sol Greening, as soon as he cleared the room with the prisoner. They discussed gravely in the prisoner’s hearing, for Bill kept his hand on Joe’s arm all the time, the advisability of tying him securely with a rope before starting on the journey to jail.
Joe grew indignant over this base proposal. He declared that if Bill was afraid of him he would go alone to the county-seat and give himself up to the sheriff if they would set him free. Bill was a little assured by his prisoner’s evident sincerity.
Another consultation brought them to the agreement that the best they could do, in the absence of handcuffs, was to hitch up to Isom’s buggy and make the prisoner drive. With 149 hands employed on the lines, he could be watched narrowly by Bill who was to take Sol’s old navy six along in his mighty hand.
Mrs. Newbolt viewed the officious constable’s preparations for the journey with many expressions of anger and disdain.
“Just look at that old fool, Bill Frost, with that revolver!” said she, turning to the neighbors, who stood silently watching. “Just as if Joe would hurt anybody, or try to run away!”
Sympathy seemed to be lacking in the crowd. Everybody was against Joe, that was attested by the glum faces and silence which met her on every hand. She was amazed at their stupidity. There they stood, people who had seen Joe grow up, people who knew that a Newbolt would give his last cent and go hungry to meet an obligation; that he would wear rags to pay his debts, as Peter had done, as Joe was doing after him; that he would work and strive night and day to keep fair his honorable name, and to preserve the honest record of the family clear and clean.
They all knew that, and they knew that a Newbolt never lied, but they hunched their backs and turned away their heads as if they thought a body was going to hit them when she spoke. It disgusted her; she felt like she could turn loose on some of them with their own records, which she had from a generation back.
She approached the buggy as Joe took up the lines and prepared to drive out of the gate.
“I don’t see why they think you done it, son, it’s so unreasonable and unneighborly of them,” said she.