“And there was absolutely nobody in the house that night but yourself and Joe Newbolt?”
“Nobody else.”
“And you have testified, here on this witness-stand, before this court and this jury”–that being another small lawyer’s trick to impress the witness with a sense of his own unworthiness–“that you went to bed early that night. Now, where was Joe Newbolt?”
“I guess he was in bed,” answered Ollie, her lips white; “I didn’t go to see.”
“No, you didn’t go to see,” repeated the prosecutor with significant stress. “Very well. Where did your husband keep his money in the house?”
“I don’t know; I never saw any of it,” Ollie answered.
The reply drew a little jiggling laugh from the crowd. It rose and died even while Captain Taylor’s knuckles were poised over the panel of the door, and his loud rap fell too late for all, save one deep-chested farmer in a far corner, who must have been a neighbor of old Isom. This man’s raucous mirth seemed a roar above the quiet of the packed room. The prosecutor looked in his direction with a frown. The sheriff stood up and peered over that way threateningly.
“Preserve order, Mr. Sheriff,” said the judge severely.
The sheriff pounded the table with his hairy fist. “Now, I tell you I don’t want to hear no more of this!” said he. 268
The prosecutor was shaken out of his pose a bit by the court-room laugh. There is nothing equal to a laugh for that, to one who is laboring to impress his importance upon the world. It took him some time to get back to his former degree of heat, skirmishing around with incidental questioning. He looked over his notes, pausing. Then he faced Ollie again quickly, leveling his finger like a pointer of direct accusation.