“Why, I believe he was comin’ up the path.”
“Had he been long out of bed?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Do you know where he had been when you first saw him coming up the path?”
The old man waited a moment before answering. Some vague apprehension of trouble about to fall upon Dannie seemed to be taking possession of his mind.
“Why, no,” he replied slowly, “I can’t just say where he had been.”
“Was this the same boy that heard you make that declaration concerning the stakes the night before?”
“Yes—why, yes—the same boy. Yes—the same boy.”
He spoke as if he were dazed. His voice dropped almost to a whisper. He gazed out over the heads of the people in the court room with eyes that were looking into the past. He saw Dannie as he appeared that morning—his weariness, his exhaustion, his nervous excitement, his utter collapse as they stood together in the dew-wet grass of the graveyard. It all came back to him with the clearness, with the quick cruelty of a lightning stroke. His eyes drooped, his face paled, his head dropped lower and still lower, till his chin rested on his breast. People in the court room who looked on him knew that something had happened to him; but whether it was physical illness or mental distress they could not tell. For a minute the room was still as death. Then the stillness was broken by a slight movement among the rear benches, swift footsteps were heard in the aisle, a boy came hurrying down to the bar of the court. His face was drawn and pale with excitement and fatigue. His eyes, from which shone both distress and determination, were fixed straight ahead of him. As he went, he held out his hands toward the old man on the witness stand.