[Mrs. Hale glances in a quick covert way at Mrs. Peters.]
Mrs. Peters. Well, not now. They're superstitious, you know. They leave.
County Attorney [to Sheriff Peters, continuing an interrupted conversation]. No sign at all of any one having come from the outside. Their own rope. Now let's go up again and go over it piece by piece. [They start upstairs.] It would have to have been some one who knew just the——
[Mrs. Peters sits down. The two women sit there not looking at one another, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back. When they talk now it is in the manner of feeling their way over strange ground, as if afraid of what they are saying, but as if they can not help saying it.]
Mrs. Hale. She liked the bird. She was going to bury it in that pretty box.
Mrs. Peters [in a whisper]. When I was a girl—my kitten—there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—and before I could get there——[Covers her face an instant.] If they hadn't held me back I would have—[Catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard, falters weakly]—hurt him.
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.