“Did you follow the line?”
“I did.”
“Did it run through your graveyard at that time?”
“No, sir, it went across the brook and around the graveyard, in as han’some a curve as you ever saw.”
Charlie Pickett, sitting back among the spectators, his heart throbbing with pity and pride as the old man’s examination progressed, heard this last answer and flushed to his finger-tips.
“Were there no stakes in the graveyard?”
“Not one. I saw the place, though, where one had been set and pulled out. I pulled another out of the same place myself four days later and flung it into the brook.”
Marshall paid little heed to this last answer, although it was in the nature of a direct challenge. A new thought appeared to have struck him. He gazed at the ceiling contemplatively for a full minute before proceeding with his examination.
“By the way,” he said, “how early in the morning was it that you saw this line of stakes?”
“Just about sunrise.”