Ollie shuddered like one entering cold water as she let her eyes take a flight out over the crowd. Perhaps she saw something in it that appalled her, or perhaps she realized only then that she was about to expose the nakedness of her soul before the world.

"Go ahead, Mrs. Chase," prompted Hammer. "You say you know about that sack of money?"

"I was taking it away with me," said she, drawing a long breath and expelling it with an audible sigh.

She seemed very tired, and she looked most hopeless, pitiable, and forlorn; still there was no wavering from the task that she had set for herself, no shrinking from its pain. "I was going to meet Curtis Morgan, the book-agent man that you've asked me about before. We intended to run off to the city together. Joe knew about it; he stopped me that night."

She paused again, picking at her fingers nervously.

"You say that Joe stopped you--" Hammer began. She cut him off, taking up her suspended narrative without spirit, as one resumes a burden.

"Yes, but let me tell you first." She looked frankly into Judge Maxwell's eyes.

"Address the jury, Mrs. Chase," admonished Hammer. She turned and looked steadily into the foreman's bearded face.

"There never was a thing out of the way between me and Joe. Joe never made love to me; he never kissed me, he never seemed to want to. When Curtis Morgan came to board with us I was about ready to die, I was so tired and lonesome and starved for a kind word.

"Isom was a hard man--harder than anybody knows that never worked for him. He worked me like I was only a plow or a hoe, without any feeling or any heart. Morgan and me--Mr. Morgan, he--well, we fell in love. We didn't act right, and Joe found it out. That was the day that Mr. Morgan and I planned to run away together. He was coming back for me that night."

"You say that you and Morgan didn't act right," said Hammer, not satisfied with a statement that might leave the jurymen the labor of conjecture. "Do you mean to say that there were improper relations between you? that you were, in a word, unfaithful to your husband, Isom Chase?"

Ollie's pale face grew scarlet; she hung her head.

"Yes," she answered, in voice shamed and low.

Her mother, shocked and astounded by this public revelation, sat as if crouching in the place where Ollie had left her. Judge Maxwell nodded encouragingly to the woman who was making her open confession.

"Go on," said he.

His eyes shifted from her to Joe Newbolt, who was looking at Ollie with every evidence of acute suffering and sympathy in his face. The judge studied him intently; Joe, his attention centered on Ollie, was insensible to the scrutiny.

Ollie told how she and Morgan had made their plans in the orchard that afternoon, and how she had gone to the house and prepared to carry out the compact that night, not knowing that Joe had overheard them and sent Morgan away. She had a most attentive and appreciative audience. She spoke in a low voice, her face turned toward the jury, according to Hammer's directions. He could not afford to have them lose one word of that belated evidence.

"I knew where Isom hid his money," said she, "and that night when I thought Joe was asleep I took up the loose board in the closet of the room where Isom and I slept and took out that little sack. There was another one like it, but I only took my share. I'd worked for it, and starved and suffered, and it was mine. I didn't consider that I was robbing him."

"You were not," Hammer a.s.sured her. "A wife cannot rob her husband, Mrs.

Chase. And then what did you do?"

"I went downstairs with that money in my hand and laid it on the kitchen table while I fixed my hat. It was dark in the kitchen, and when I was ready to go to meet Mr. Morgan in the place agreed on between us, I struck a match to find my way to the door without b.u.mpin' into a chair or something and making a noise that would wake up Joe.

"I didn't know he was already up and watching for me to start. He was at the door when I opened it, and he told me to light the lamp. I wouldn't do it. I didn't want him to see me all dressed and ready to leave, and I wanted to try to slip that sack of money off the table before he saw it, too. He came in; I guess he put his hat down on the table in the dark, and it fell on top of the sack.

"When he lit the lamp in a minute you couldn't have told there was anything under the hat unless you stood in a certain place, where it showed a little under the brim. Joe told me he knew all about Morgan and me, and that he'd sent him away. He said it was wrong for me to leave Isom; he said that Isom was better than Morgan, bad as he was.

"I flared up and got mad at Joe, but he was gentle and kind, and talked to me and showed me where I was wrong. I'd kind of tried to make love to Joe a little before that," she confessed, her face flushing hotly again, "before Mr. Morgan came, that was. I'll tell you this so you'll know that there was nothing out of the way between me and Joe.

"Joe didn't seem to understand such things. He was nothing but a boy till the night Isom was killed. He didn't take me up on it like Morgan did. I know it was wrong in me; but Isom drove me to it, and I've suffered for it--more than I can ever make you understand."

She appealed to the judge in her manner of saying that; appealed as for the absolution which she had earned by a cruel penance. He nodded kindly, his face very grave.

"Yes, Mrs. Chase," said Hammer. "And then what did you do next?"

"Well, while Joe was persuading me to go back to bed I put my arms around his neck. I wanted to smooth it over with him, so he'd go to bed first and I could take the money and put it back, for one thing; and because I really was sorry for what I'd done, and was ashamed of it, and felt lonesome and kicked out, and like n.o.body didn't care.

"Isom came in and saw us standing there that way, with my hands on Joe's shoulders, and he rushed up and said: 'I'll kill you!' He said we was standing there hugging each other, and that we'd disgraced him; but that wasn't so. It was all my fault, but Joe didn't tell him that."

"And what did Joe tell him, Mrs. Chase?" asked Hammer, aglow with the victory which he felt to be already in his hand. He looked with gloating triumph at the prosecuting attorney, who sat at the table twirling a pencil in his fingers, and did not lift his eyes.

"Joe told Isom he was making a mistake, and then Isom ripped and swore and threatened to kill us both. He looked around for something to do it with, and he saw that sack of money under Joe's hat. He jumped for the table and grabbed it, and then he made for the gun. I told Joe to stop him, and Joe tried. But he was too late. The rest of it happened just like Joe's already told you."

Ollie's head drooped forward wearily, and her hands lay pa.s.sively in her lap. It seemed that she considered the story concluded, but Hammer was not of that mind.

"After Isom fell--after the gun went off and Isom fell--what did you and Joe do?" he asked.

"We heard somebody coming in a minute. We didn't know who it could be, but I was afraid. I knew if it got out on me about my start to run off with Morgan, and all the rest of it, I'd be ruined and disgraced forever.

"Joe knew it too, better than I did. I didn't have to tell him, and I never even hinted for him to do what he did. I never even thought of that. I asked him what we'd do, and he told me to go upstairs and leave him to do the talking. I went. I was coward enough to go and leave him to bear the blame. When Joe lied at the inquest to save me, I backed him up in it, and I stuck to it up till now. Maybe I was a little mad at him for coming between me and Mr. Morgan, but that was just a streak. That's the only lie Joe's told, and you can see he never would have told that to save himself. I don't want to see him suffer any more for me."

Ollie concluded her recital in the same low, dragging and spiritless voice in which she had begun it. Conscience whipped her through, but it could not make her unafraid. Hammer turned to the prosecutor with questioning eyes. Lucas announced that he did not desire to cross-examine the witness, and the judge dismissed her.

Ollie went back to her mother. No demonstration accompanied her pa.s.sing, but a great sigh sounded over the room as the tenseness of the listening strain relaxed, and the fulness of satisfaction came in its place.

Mrs. Newbolt still clung to her son's hand. She nodded at the prosecuting attorney with glowing eyes, as if glorying over him in the moment of his defeat. Alice Price smiled joyously, and leaned back from her posture of concentration. The colonel whispered to her, bringing the palms of his hands together in silent but expressive applause. The prosecuting attorney stood.

"Your honor--" he began, but Judge Maxwell, lifting his head from the reflecting pose into which he had fallen when Ollie left the stand, silenced him with an impatient gesture.

"One moment, Mr. Prosecutor," said he.

The prosecutor flushed, and sat down in ruffled dignity.

"I merely wanted to make a motion for dismissal," said he, sarcastically, as if it was only the merest incidental in the day's proceedings.

"That is not the procedure," said the judge. "The state owes it to this defendant to absolve him before the public of the obloquy of this unfounded and cruel accusation."

"Vindication is what we demand, your honor," said Hammer grandly; "vindication before the world!"

He spread his arms wide, as if the world stood before him, fat and big of girth like himself, and he meant to embrace it with the next breath.

"You shall have it, Mr. Hammer," said the judge. He turned to the jury.

"Gentlemen of the jury, this case has come to a sudden and unexpected end. The state's case, prosecuted with such worthy energy and honorable intention, has collapsed. Your one duty now, gentlemen, is to return a verdict of not guilty. Will it be necessary for you to retire to the jury room?"

The jurymen had been exchanging glances. Now the foreman rose, tall and solemn, with beard upon his breast.

"Your honor, it will not be necessary for the jury to retire," said he.

"We are ready to return our verdict."

According to the form, the foreman wrote out the verdict on the blank provided by statute; he stood with his fellows while the clerk of the court read it aloud: