Father struck in, "No, Jim, you'll only frighten her!" In a lower voice he said something that sounded like, "Not on the stand yet." Then, leaning toward me, across the table, resting on his elbow until his face was level with my own, "I know you must have been much frightened at what you saw, child, and it's possible you may have been a little hysterical, isn't it? It's possible you might have fancied a revolver in his hand, isn't it, when there was none there?"
He said this very slowly and gently, as if he were trying to soothe me, but looking straight into his eyes I saw a sharp anxious light there, and the conviction came to me that he very much wanted me to have been mistaken. Mr. Dingley, from the fireplace, was watching me hard, as if he were trying, with that incredulous look of his, to force it on me that I must be mistaken. And then the thought floated through my mind that in some way it would be better for that handsome, terrible man if I could say I hadn't seen a revolver. I tried to make myself believe that they were right; I shut my eyes. The picture came to me as if it were before me still, and nothing in it was more clear than that thing of steel and pearl. "I wasn't hysterical," I said, "I saw it plainly."
"Could you take your oath in court?" father said in a stern voice.
"Oh, yes."
Father dropped my hand and leaned back. He looked puzzled. Mr. Dingley came close to him and said something so low that I couldn't catch it. But father answered in his usual voice as if he had forgotten I was there, "No, Jim, if she says so then she did—be sure of that!" He listened again while Mr. Dingley murmured to him, and the look of their faces, the lowered, hushed tones of their voices, made me feel, more than words could have done, that they were talking about something very serious. All the while Mr. Dingley was speaking father slowly nodded. "I have no doubt you could, Jim," he said at last, "and it's very good of you to offer, but we can't suppress evidence because it happens—" He dropped his voice and I lost the last word.
Mr. Dingley looked silently down for a moment, and I thought he was going to say something more, but finally he only, shrugged. "Well, what time do you want to go down, then?" he said.
Father looked at his watch. "We might as well get this business over as soon as possible. Ellie—" His voice sounded so sharply on my name that I jumped up, all of a nervous tremble. "Go up-stairs and put on your bonnet, I want you to come with me."
I felt that my voice was woefully unsteady.
"Won't you please tell me what is happening and where we are going?"
"Martin Rood has been shot; he is dead. A man has been arrested, corresponding to your description, and we are going down to the prison to see if you can identify him." I stared at father, and my only feeling was one of vague, incredulous wonder. Martin Rood, the fine sleek gentleman whom I had seen swinging out of his gambling-house in the late afternoons—could that have been he, that huddled heap of clothes in the gutter?