So the autumn days went by and winter came. It came early and promised to be severe. Snow fell before Thanksgiving, and by the first of December sleighing was general throughout the country.
The trial of the equity suit was set down for the second Monday of December, and many witnesses had been subpœnaed from the vicinity of Pickett’s Gap. Early on Monday morning they had started, two loads of them, including Abner Pickett and Gabriel, for Mooreville, the county-seat. Dannie had not been subpœnaed. He smiled grimly as he saw the others depart, and thought how much more he could do toward clearing up the situation than the entire dozen who had been called. It was a lonely day for him after they were gone, a dull, cold day, with occasional flakes of snow in the air, and he was glad when night came, and the chores were all done, and the supper ended, and he and Aunt Martha could watch the blaze of logs in the sitting-room fireplace for the usual half hour before retiring. It was a quiet half hour this night, for neither of them seemed to be in the mood for conversation. And yet Dannie’s mind was in a tumult. The departure of the witnesses, the nearness of the trial, the impossibility of his knowing what would occur at Mooreville, the increasing dread that for lack of testimony which he alone could give, some terrible injustice would be done; these things, weighing on his mind with accumulating power, forced him into a state of nervous apprehension and distress more painful than any physical hurt from which he had ever suffered.
Aunt Martha saw that he was laboring under intense excitement or was stirred by some deep emotion. She knew that it was not wise to question him, but gently and soothingly she placed her hand on his forehead and began to smooth back his hair. Somehow she felt that the crisis which had been impending for many weeks had at last been reached.
And it had. Lashes on his bare back would never have drawn a confession from this boy. Neither commands nor threats would ever have induced him to give up his secret against his will. Yet the influence of this quiet hour, this mellow firelight, the soothing presence of this gentle woman who had always been to him so loving, so loyal, so truly motherlike, began to draw with irresistible force from his heart to his lips the whole story of his offence and his suffering. At last, unable to repress his emotion, he dropped to the floor at the good woman’s feet and buried his head in her lap.
“Oh, Aunt Martha!” he cried, “I can’t keep it to myself any longer; I can’t! I can’t! it’ll kill me!”
Still smoothing back his hair she laid a loving hand across his shoulder.
“Tell me, dearie, tell me what it is. I know I can help you.”
Thus encouraged he poured out to her the whole miserable story, all of it; without reservation or excuse, or any attempt to blame others or to shield himself.
[“What shall I do, Aunt Martha?”] he wailed at last. “What shall I do? Oh! what shall I do?”
