on as Sol Greening did on his strawberry roan. The coroner had not
come when she got there; Bill Frost allowed Joe to come down to the
unused parlor of old Isom's house to talk with her. Frost showed a
disposition to linger within the room and hear what was said, but she
pushed him out.

"I'll not let him run off, Bill Frost," said she. "If he'd wanted to
run, if he'd had anything to run from, he could 'a' gone last night,
couldn't he, you dunce?"

She closed the door, and no word of what passed between mother and son
reached the outside of it, although Bill Frost strained his ear against
it, listening.

When the coroner arrived in the middle of the forenoon he found no
difficulty in obtaining a jury to inquire into Isom's death. The major
and minor male inhabitants of the entire neighborhood were assembled
there, every qualified man of them itching to sit on the jury. As the
coroner had need of but six, and these being soon chosen, the others had
no further pleasure to look forward to save the inquiry into the
tragedy.

After examining the wound which caused Isom's death, the coroner had
ordered the body removed from the kitchen floor. The lamp was still
burning on the table, and the coroner blew it out; the gold lay
scattered on the floor where it had fallen, and he gathered it up and
put it in the little sack.

When the coroner went to the parlor to convene the inquest, the crowd
packed after him. Those who were not able to get into the room clustered
in a bunch at the door, and protruded themselves in at the windows,
silent and expectant.

Joe sat with his mother on one hand, Constable Frost on the other, and
across the room was Ollie, wedged between fat Mrs. Sol Greening and her
bony daughter-in-law, who claimed the office of ministrants on the
ground of priority above all the gasping, sympathetic, and exclaiming
females who had arrived after them.

Ollie was pale and exhausted in appearance, her face drawn and
bloodless, like that of one who wakes out of an anesthetic after a
surgical operation upon some vital part. Her eyes were hollowed, her
nostrils pinched, but there was no trace of tears upon her cheeks. The
neighbors said it was dry grief, the deepest and most lasting that racks
the human heart. They pitied her, so young and fair, so crushed and
bowed under that sudden, dark sorrow.

Mrs. Greening had thrown something black over the young widow's
shoulders, of which she seemed unaware. It kept sli