The brothers insensibly edged away from this painful altercation. A little elderly man, in shabby broadcloth which seemed strangely out of place among the rough tweeds and homespuns of the farmers, detached himself from the group of jurors, and came over to them, with a subdued halfsmile of recognition. It was the Thessaly undertaker.
“Tew bad, ain’t it?” he said glibly, “allus some such scrimmage as thet, on every one of Timms’ juries. He ain’t got no exec’tive ability, I say. I’d like to see him run a funer’l with eight bearers—all green han’s! I told him thet once, right to his face! But then of course yeh knaow I can’t say much. He’s techy, ’n’ ’twouldn’t do fur me to rile him. We hev a kind o’ ’rangement, you see. I hev to be on hand any-way, ’n’ he allus puts me on the jury; it helps him ’n’ it helps me. I kin always sort o’ smooth over things, if any o’ th’ jurors feels cranky, yeh knaow. They’ll listen to me, cuz they reelize I’ve hed experience, ’n’ then there’s a good deal in knaowin’ haow to manage men, in hevin’ what I call exec’tive ability. Of course, this case is peculiar. They ain’t no question abaout th’ death bein’ accidental. But this man you heerd kickin’, this Cyrus Ballou, he’s makin’ a dead set to hev’ Zeke Tallman condemned fur hevin’ his fence up there in bad repair. He ’n’ Tallman’s a lawin’ of it abaout some o’ his steers thet got into Tallman’s cabbages, ’n’ thet’s why——-”
“I suppose we can leave this to you!” John broke in, impatience mastering the solemnity of the scene. “Have you made any arrangements? You know what ought to be done.”
“Yes, my boy ought to be here by this time with my covered wagon, what I call my ambulance.”
The brothers turned away from him. The little man remembered something and hurrying after them laid his hand on John’s arm.
“When I spoke abaout allus bein’ on the jury, you knaow, p’raps I ought to’ve explained.” He proceeded with an uneasy, deprecating gesture. “You see, a juror gits a dollar a day, ’n’ sometimes friends of the remains think I ought to deduck thet f’m my bill, but ef you’ll jest consider——”
“Oh for God’s sake! leave us alone!”
It was Seth who spoke, and the undertaker joined his fellow-jurors at the foot of the hill forthwith. The brothers went back, and stood again in oppressed silence over the blanketed form.
Dr. William Henry Timms meanwhile conversed apart with his panel. He was a middle-aged, shrewdfaced man, who, like so many thousands of other Whig babes born in the forties, had been named after the hero of Tippecanoe. He was more politician than coroner, more coroner than doctor. He hung by a rather dubious diploma upon the outskirts of his profession, snubbed by the County Society, contemned by most sensible Thessaly families as “not fit to doctor a sick cat.” But he had a powerful “pull” in the politics of the county, and the office could not, apparently, be wrested from him, no matter how capable his opponent.
In the earlier years of his official service he had been over zealous in suspecting mysteries, and had twice been reprimanded by the Supreme Court Judge, and much oftener by the District Attorney, for enveloping in criminal suspicion cases which, when intelligently examined, were palpable and blameless casualties. These experiences had sensibly modified his zeal. He had put the detective habit of mind far away behind him, and, like a wise official, bent all his energies now to the more practical labor of dividing each inquest into as many sessions as possible. Had he been a Federal Deputy Marshal, he could not have been more skilled in this delicate art of getting eight days’ pay out of a three hours’ case. A bare suggestion of mystery at the start, to be almost cleared up, then revived, then exploited carefully, then finally dissipated, and all so deftly that the District Attorney, who lived at Octavius, would not be inspired to come over and interfere—this was Dr. Timms’ conception of a satisfactory inquest. Occasionally there would be the added zest of an opportunity to formally inflict censure upon somebody, and if this involved some wealthy or potential person, so much the better: to withhold the censure meant tangible profit, to sternly mete it (failing a fair arrangement) meant public credit as a bold, vigilant official.