“Yes,” she said, “too fond of him, Colonel.”
The attorney seemed to draw his big body together. He stood up before his table.
“Now,” he went on, “let us get all the bad features of this case together. You say other persons wished this man’s death. What makes you say that, Ellen?”
“Well, Colonel,” replied the witness, “that’s pretty hard for me to answer. Everybody knows that Mr. Collander had a lot of enemies, a lot of people didn’t like him; a lot of people who had just as much reason to threaten to kill him as I had, and they must have meant it when I didn’t mean it.”
“Ellen,” said the attorney, “let us try to be a little more precise about this. You say that there were persons who wished to kill the lawyer, Collander; that you thought he was in danger, and that you had this weapon cleaned and loaded so he would have some means of defending himself.”
The prosecuting attorney interrupted.
“Just a moment, Colonel,” he said. “The witness hasn’t said anything of the sort.”
The attorney made an irrelevant gesture.
“Perhaps not entirely in those words,” he said, “but it is the substance and intent of the answers. I shall permit her to reply for herself. What do you say about that, Ellen?”
The witness answered at once.