Suddenly, however, a shrill voice cried, “Well, if no one else will do it, I will.” And the little old woman who had already taken up the cudgels for the Dominie, forced her way hastily to the front of the crowd.
“Look’ee there; Auntie’s going to speak,” cried various voices. Every one repeated, laughing, “Auntie’s going to speak!” for under this name the old lady was known to all the village.
Auntie cared neither for laughter nor tears, but went straight forward, climbed the court-house steps, and then suddenly turned round, waved her thin old arms, and cried as loud as she could, “You’re a pack of cowards, the lot of you,—do you hear, you great loobies?” Then she disappeared inside. And though she was a funny figure enough as she stood there, no one thought of laughing,—they all felt the truth of Auntie’s words too deeply.
“YOU’RE A PACK OF COWARDS.”
Auntie was conducted inside by the veldwachter, and her eye immediately fell on her client. The Dominie remained seated in the same attitude, discouraged and dejected—deeply humiliated by the thought that, at his age, with his aspirations and such a past behind him, he should have to bow his head beneath the weight of a criminal accusation! The trouble dimmed his thinking powers, and drove the blood through his veins at lightning speed. What a hammering in his pulses—what a thumping in his temples—what a rushing in his ears! He felt like a swimmer who has been long under water, and finds it press more and more crushingly on him, and hears its noise in his ears. That was the fever—the fever that was rising higher and higher in his blood, and brought that unnatural flush to his usually pale cheeks.
Auntie looked at the sad spectacle he presented, and her indignation rose, and craved for immediate utterance.
“Burgomaster!” she began, “don’t you call it a shame that the Dominie——”
But her flow of words was immediately interrupted by the burgomaster: “Silence! witness, this is not as it should be. You have come here to give your evidence voluntarily, and to do this effectually all the forms must be observed. Witness, what is your name?”
“Well, I never—my name! Just as though the whole village didn’t know me? Come, come, Burgomaster, every one knew my name long before yours was ever thought of; and do you want to pretend that you don’t know me? No, man, that won’t do. All those grand manners won’t go down with old Auntie. All the same, I can tell you plainly why the poor fellow could not have stolen the pears; and so you are quite out of it, with all your fine forms and speeches, do you see? Now just let me ask you, if he took the pears, where did he leave them,—say?”