they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas’s corn
— you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out
somebody overheard them say that. That’s because
they found out by and by who it was that was doing
the lugging, and THEY know best why they swore here
that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait — which it
WASN’T, and they knowed it when they swore to that lie.
“A man out in the moonlight DID see a murdered
person put under ground in the tobacker field — but it
wasn’t Uncle Silas that done the burying. He was in
his bed at that very time.
“Now, then, before I go on, I want to ask you if
you’ve ever noticed this: that people, when they’re
thinking deep, or when they’re worried, are most always
doing something with their hands, and they don’t know
it, and don’t notice what it is their hands are doing.
some stroke their chins; some stroke their noses; some
stroke up UNDER their chin with their hand; some twirl
a chain, some fumble a button, then there’s some that
draws a figure or a letter with their finger on their
cheek, or under their chin or on their under lip. That’s
MY way. When I’m restless, or worried, or thinking
hard, I draw capital V’s on my cheek or on my under
lip or under my chin, and never anything BUT capital
V’s — and half the time I don’t notice it and don’t
know I’m doing it.”
That was odd. That is just what I do; only I make
an O. And I could see people nodding to one another,
same as they do when they mean “THAT’s so.”
“Now, then, I’ll go on. That same Saturday — no,
it was the night before — there was a steamboat laying
at Flagler’s Landing, forty miles above here, and it
was raining and storming like the nation. And there
was a thief aboard, and he had them two big di’monds
that’s advertised out here on this courthouse door;
and he slipped ashore with his hand-bag and struck
out into the dark and the storm, and he was a-hoping
he could get to this town all right and be safe. But he
had two pals aboard the boat, hiding, and he knowed
they was going to kill him the first chance they got and
take the di’monds; because all three stole them, and
then this fellow he got hold of them and skipped.
“Well, he hadn’t been gone more’n ten minutes be-
fore his pals found it out, and they jumped ashore and
lit out after him. Prob’ly they burnt matches and
found his tracks. Anyway, they dogged along after
him all day Saturday and kept out of his sight; and
towards sundown he come to the bunch of sycamores
down by Uncle Silas’s field, and he went in there to
get a disguise out of his hand-bag and put it on before
he showed himself here in the town — and mind you he
done that just a little after the time that Uncle Silas was
hitting Jubiter Dunlap over the head with a club — for
he DID hit him.
“But the minute the pals see that thief slide into the
bunch of sycamores, they jumped out of the bushes
and slid in after him.
“They fell on him and clubbed him to death.
“Yes, for all he screamed and howled so, they never
had no mercy on him, but clubbed him to death. And
two men that was running along the road heard him
yelling that way, and they made a rush into the syca- i
more bunch — which was where they was bound for,
anyway — and when the pals saw them they lit out and
the two new men after them a-chasing them as tight as
they could go. But only a minute or two — then these
two new men slipped back very quiet into the syca-
mores.
“THEN what did they do? I will tell you what they
done. They found where the thief had got his disguise
out of his carpet-sack to put on; so one of them strips