“You just slipped it on,” repeated the prosecutor, turning his eyes to the jury, and not even facing Mrs. Chase as he spoke, but reading into her words discredit, suspicion, and a guilty knowledge.
“It was the only one I had besides two old wrappers. It was the one I was married in, and the only one I could put on to look decent in before people,” said she.
A crowd is the most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sigh and groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with the ease of an infant, and then immediately regain its immobility and fixed attention. With Ollie’s simple statement a sound rose from it which was a denunciation and a curse upon the ashes of old Isom Chase. It was as if a sympathetic old lady had shaken her head and groaned:
“Oh, shame on you–shame!”
Hammer gave the jury a wide-sweeping look of satisfaction, and made a note on the tumbled pile of paper which lay in front of him.
The prosecutor was a man with congressional aspirations, and he did not care to prejudice his popularity by going too far in baiting a woman, especially one who had public sympathy in the measure that it was plainly extended to Ollie. He eased up, descending from his heights of severity, and began to address her respectfully in a manner that was little short of apology for what his stern duty compelled him to do.
“Now I will ask you, Mrs. Chase, whether your husband and this defendant, Joe Newbolt, ever had words in your hearing?”
“Once,” Ollie replied.
“Do you recall the day?”
“It was the morning after Joe came to our house to work,” said she. 271