"Yes," her companion replied, "he surely does look like a desperate character. Wasn't it awful for him to kill that poor old man?"
Jasper's face was really hard and stern; how could it have been otherwise? Where was all their Christian charity? he asked himself. Where was the spirit of justice? Those people knew that he had not yet received a fair trial, and why were they so willing and eager to believe him guilty?
Old Simon Squabbles was on board, and though he said nothing to Jasper, he expressed his views to several men a short distance away.
"It's nothin' more than I expected," he boasted. "I knew he would soon reach the end of his tether after the experience I had with him. I had him workin' fer me, an' when I wouldn't pay him fer loafin' in the potato patch, he got as mad as blazes an' said things I wouldn't like to repeat."
Jasper endured such remarks without a word. He did not feel like making any reply. In fact, he realised how useless it would be, and the less said the better.
The limit of his bitterness was reached when a woman approached and began to speak to him about his soul, and the danger of hell fire. She dilated glibly upon the awfulness of sin, and even offered to pray for him.
"Keep your prayers for yourself," Jasper retorted, stung almost to fury by her impudence. "You'll do more good if you pray for these snivelling hypocrites," and he motioned to those standing around him.
"Isn't it awful!" and the woman held up her hands in horror. "You should be afraid to speak that way, and you in such danger. Read this, poor man," and she held forth a tract she had been holding in her hand.
Jasper glanced at it and read the heading, "Flee from Hell Fire." He took it, and then crushing it in his hand, threw it from him.
"I've had enough of this," he cried, "and I'll stand no more. Leave me alone, is all I ask. Hell can be no worse than what you people are dealing out to me now."