“There never was a thing out of the way between me and Joe. Joe never made love to me; he never kissed me, he never seemed to want to. When Curtis Morgan came to board with us I was about ready to die, I was so tired and lonesome and starved for a kind word.
“Isom was a hard man–harder than anybody knows that never worked for him. He worked me like I was only a plow or a hoe, without any feeling or any heart. Morgan and me–Mr. Morgan, he–well, we fell in love. We didn’t act right, and Joe found it out. That was the day that Mr. Morgan and I planned to run away together. He was coming back for me that night.”
“You say that you and Morgan didn’t act right,” said Hammer, not satisfied with a statement that might leave the jurymen the labor of conjecture. “Do you mean to say that there were improper relations between you? that you were, in a word, unfaithful to your husband, Isom Chase?”
Ollie’s pale face grew scarlet; she hung her head.
“Yes,” she answered, in voice shamed and low.
Her mother, shocked and astounded by this public revelation, sat as if crouching in the place where Ollie had left her. Judge Maxwell nodded encouragingly to the woman who was making her open confession.
“Go on,” said he.
His eyes shifted from her to Joe Newbolt, who was looking at Ollie with every evidence of acute suffering and sympathy in his face. The judge studied him intently; Joe, his attention centered on Ollie, was insensible to the scrutiny.
Ollie told how she and Morgan had made their plans in the orchard that afternoon, and how she had gone to the house and prepared to carry out the compact that night, not knowing that Joe had overheard them and sent Morgan 330 away. She had a most attentive and appreciative audience. She spoke in a low voice, her face turned toward the jury, according to Hammer’s directions. He could not afford to have them lose one word of that belated evidence.
“I knew where Isom hid his money,” said she, “and that night when I thought Joe was asleep I took up the loose board in the closet of the room where Isom and I slept and took out that little sack. There was another one like it, but I only took my share. I’d worked for it, and starved and suffered, and it was mine. I didn’t consider that I was robbing him.”