"I swear," muttered a man in the audience to his neighbor, "ef that there lawyer chap hopes to make anything out of Andy's testimony that will help him, I miss my guess. Why the pore devil stutters so that nobody kin git a word outa him scarcely, when there's nothin' excitin' goin' on, let alone with all these here people a-settin' there a-listenin'. I'm a-bettin' he won't be able to tell his own name to say nothin' about explainin' how he didn't kill that there yearlin'."
But the attorney knew his business and Morrow remained quietly in his seat beside the sheriff. Having finished his preliminary statement, the young lawyer whispered to the bailiff, who walked across to a small jury room opening off the main courtroom, and opened a door.
A low-spoken word, and there stepped from the room a woman—the wife of the prisoner.
She was tall, slim and about twenty-five years of age. From the corner of her mouth protruded the "dip-stick," that ever present solace of the sex among her class, and without which she probably never could have faced the crowd.
A faded blue calico dress over which she wore a small shawl, and on her head a bedraggled hat with a few tousled roses stuck on one side, made up a costume which only accentuated her drawn face and sorrowful eyes.
After a few moments of whispered conversation with the lawyer, she took the witness chair.
At first her answers to his questions as to her name, age, etc., were given in a low, scarcely audible voice, and the room was so still it was fairly oppressive.
"You understand, do you," he asked her, "that your husband is charged with killing a yearling belonging to Mr. Barker?"
"I shore do," was the reply.
"Will you, please, tell the jury in your own words, just what you know about this matter," the lawyer said.