for — “[I see Tom give a jump and look glad THIS time,
to a dead certainty]” — and in that moment I’ve told
you about, I forgot my God and remembered only my
heart’s bitterness, God forgive me, and I struck to kill.
In one second I was miserably sorry — oh, filled with
remorse; but I thought of my poor family, and I MUST
hide what I’d done for their sakes; and I did hide that
corpse in the bushes; and presently I carried it to the
tobacker field; and in the deep night I went with my
shovel and buried it where –”
Up jumps Tom and shouts:
“NOW, I’ve got it!” and waves his hand, oh, ever
so fine and starchy, towards the old man, and says:
“Set down! A murder WAS done, but you never
had no hand in it!”
Well, sir, you could a heard a pin drop. And the
old man he sunk down kind of bewildered in his seat
and Aunt Sally and Benny didn’t know it, because they
was so astonished and staring at Tom with their
mouths open and not knowing what they was about.
And the whole house the same. I never seen people
look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain’t ever seen
eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn
did. Tom says, perfectly ca’m:
“Your honor, may I speak?”
“For God’s sake, yes — go on!” says the judge, so
astonished and mixed up he didn’t know what he was
about hardly.
Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two
— that was for to work up an “effect,” as he calls it
— then he started in just as ca’m as ever, and says:
“For about two weeks now there’s been a little bill
sticking on the front of this courthouse offering two
thousand dollars reward for a couple of big di’monds
— stole at St. Louis. Them di’monds is worth twelve
thousand dollars. But never mind about that till I get
to it. Now about this murder. I will tell you all
about it — how it happened — who done it — every
DEtail.”
You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to
listen for all they was worth.
“This man here, Brace Dunlap, that’s been sniveling
so about his dead brother that YOU know he never
cared a straw for, wanted to marry that young girl
there, and she wouldn’t have him. So he told Uncle
Silas he would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed
how powerful he was, and how little chance he had
against such a man, and he was scared and worried, and
done everything he could think of to smooth him over
and get him to be good to him: he even took his no-
account brother Jubiter on the farm and give him wages
and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter
done everything his brother could contrive to insult
Uncle Silas, and fret and worry him, and try to drive
Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt, so as to injure Uncle
Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody
turned against him and said the meanest kind of things
about him, and it graduly broke his heart — yes, and
he was so worried and distressed that often he warn’t
hardly in his right mind.
“Well, on that Saturday that we’ve had so much
trouble about, two of these witnesses here, Lem Beebe
and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle Silas and
Jubiter Dunlap was at work — and that much of what
they’ve said is true, the rest is lies. They didn’t hear
Uncle Silas say he would kill Jubiter; they didn’t hear
no blow struck; they didn’t see no dead man, and they
didn’t see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes.
Look at them now — how they set there, wishing they
hadn’t been so handy with their tongues; anyway,
they’ll wish it before I get done.
“That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers
DID see one man lugging off another one. That much
of what they said is true, and the rest is lies. First off