“This man here, Brace Dunlap, that’s been sniveling so about his dead brother that you know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl there, and she wouldn’t have him. So he told Uncle Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it graduly broke his heart—yes, and he was so worried and distressed that often he warn’t hardly in his right mind.
“Well, on that Saturday that we’ve had so much trouble about, two of these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work—and that much of what they’ve said is true, the rest is lies. They didn’t hear Uncle Silas say he would kill Jubiter; they didn’t hear no blow struck; they didn’t see no dead man, and they didn’t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them now—how they set there, wishing they hadn’t been so handy with their tongues; anyway, they’ll wish it before I get done.
“That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers did see one man lugging off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas’s corn—you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody overheard them say that. That’s because they found out by and by who it was that was doing the lugging, and they know best why they swore here that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait—which it wasn’t, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.
“A man out in the moonlight did see a murdered person put under ground in the tobacker field—but it wasn’t Uncle Silas that done the burying. He was in his bed at that very time.
“Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if you’ve ever noticed this: that people, when they’re thinking deep, or when they’re worried, are most always doing something with their hands, and they don’t know it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are doing, some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some stroke up under their chin with their hand; some twirl a chain, some fumble a button, then there’s some that draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That’s my way. When I’m restless, or worried, or thinking hard, I draw capital V’s on my cheek or on my under lip or under my chin, and never anything but capital V’s—and half the time I don’t notice it and don’t know I’m doing it.”
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make an O. And I could see people nodding to one another, same as they do when they mean “that’ so.”
“Now, then, I’ll go on. That same Saturday—no, it was the night before—there was a steamboat laying at Flagler’s Landing, forty miles above here, and it was raining and storming like the nation. And there was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di’monds that’s advertised out here on this courthouse door; and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed they was going to kill him the first chance they got and take the di’monds; because all three stole them, and then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
“Well, he hadn’t been gone more’n ten minutes before his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and lit out after him. Prob’ly they burnt matches and found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after him all day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores down by Uncle Silas’s field, and he went in there to get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before he showed himself here in the town—and mind you he done that just a little after the time that Uncle Silas was hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a club—for he did hit him.
“But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes and slid in after him.
“They fell on him and clubbed him to death.