“Neighborly!” said Joe, with sudden bitterness in his young voice. “What am I to them but ‘the pore folks’ boy’? They didn’t believe me, Mother, but when I get a chance to stand up before Judge Maxwell over at Shelbyville, I’ll be talking to a gentleman. A gentleman will understand.” 150
That sounded like his father, she thought. It moved her with a feeling of the pride which she had reflected feebly for so many years.
“I hope so, son,” said she. “If you’re not back in a day or two, I’ll be over to Shelbyville.”
“Drive on, drive on!” ordered Bill, the old black revolver in his hand.
The crowd was impressed by that weapon, knowing its history, as everybody did. Greening’s more or less honorable father had carried it with him when he rode in the train of Quantrell, the infamous bushwhacker. It was the old man’s boast to his dying day that he had exterminated a family of father and five sons in the raid upon Lawrence with that old weapon, without recharging it.
Joe drove through the open gate without a look behind him. His face was pale, his heart was sick with the humiliation of that day. But he felt that it was only a temporary cloud into which he had stepped, and that clearing would come again in a little while. It was inconceivable to him how anybody could be so foolish as to believe, or even suspect, that he had murdered Isom Chase.
The assembled people having heard all there was to hear, and seen all there was to see at the gate, began to straggle back to the farmhouse to gossip, to gape, and exclaim. To Greening and his family had fallen the office of comforting the widow and arranging for the burial, and now Sol had many offers to sit up with the corpse that night.
Mrs. Newbolt stood at the roadside, looking after the conveyance which was taking her son away to jail, until a bend behind a tall hedge hid it from her eyes. She made no further attempt to find sympathy or support among her neighbors, who looked at her curiously as she stood there, and turned away selfishly when she faced them.
Back over the road that she had hurried along that morning 151 she trudged, slowly and without spirit, her feet like stones. As she went, she tried to arrange the day’s happenings in her mind. All was confusion there. The one plain thing, the thing that persisted and obtruded, was that they had arrested Joe on a charge that was at once hideous and unjust.
Evening was falling when she reached the turn of the road and looked ahead to her home. She had no heart for supper, no heart to lift the latch of the kitchen door and enter there. There was no desire in her heart but for her son, and no comfort in the prospect of her oncoming night.