"Sure, let's go," agreed the whiskery one. "It's the cleanest job ye've put me to yet, Hammond, this lookin' at a trunk. Cleaner an' more to my taste nor foreclosin' mortgages an' evictin' widows."
He turned and saw Mark Ducat and extended a hairy hand.
"How do, Mark," he said.
"How do, Sheriff," returned Mark, shaking his hand.
"Speakin' of widows," continued Hart, sagging an elbow to the counter and crossing his long legs, "have ye seen old Widow Wilson of Kingswood Settlement since the deacon here sicked the law on to her an' run her off her little old farm?"
"No, I ain't seed her, but I heered tell the Duffys took her in," returned Mark.
"They did that, sure enough," said the other, "but they can't keep her in. She's went that clean off her head since losin' her home that ye can't do nothin' with her. Can't keep her housed, anyhow, though she's reasonable enough about eatin' an' sleepin' whenever she stops in anywheres. Hoofs the roads all day an' sometimes all night—an' winter a-comin' on. Well, let's go along an' look at this here baggage."
"What brought ye up-river so early in the day, Sheriff?" asked Mark. "Looks to me kinder like ye'd been sent fer."
"Not aigzactly, Mark, but I heered a kinder rumor as how righteousness had bust out so hot in Deacon Hammond here that he'd up an' murdered a young man for settin' in to a hand at cribbage. So I come in my official capacity to take a look at the corpse, but I reckon there's nothin' to see but some baggage, after all."
Amos Hammond led the four men across the road and through his front door and pointed to a leather trunk in the front hall, all in a black silence.