MRS HALE: (with a slow look around her) I wonder how it would seem never to have had any children around, (pause) No, Wright wouldn't like the bird—a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.
MRS PETERS: (moving uneasily) We don't know who killed the bird.
MRS HALE: I knew John Wright.
MRS PETERS: It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs Hale. Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him.
MRS HALE: His neck. Choked the life out of him.
(Her hand goes out and rests on the bird-cage.)
MRS PETERS: (with rising voice) We don't know who killed him. We don't know.
MRS HALE: (her own feeling not interrupted) If there'd been years and years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful—still, after the bird was still.
MRS PETERS: (something within her speaking) I know what stillness is. When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died—after he was two years old, and me with no other then—
MRS HALE: (moving) How soon do you suppose they'll be through, looking for the evidence?