you and Isom quarreled last night?"

"Yes, sir; we had a little spat."

"A little spat," repeated the coroner, looking around the room as if to
ask the people on whose votes he depended for reelection what _they_
thought of a "little spat" which ended in a man's death. There was a
sort of broad humor about it which appealed to the blunt rural sense. A
grin ran over their faces like a spreading wavelet on a pool. "Well now,
what was the beginning of that 'little spat'?"

"Oh, what's that got to do with it?" asked Joe impatiently. "You asked
me that before."

"And I'm asking you again. What was that quarrel over?"

"None of your business!" said Joe hotly, caring nothing for consequences.

"Then you refuse to answer, and persist in your refusal?"

"Well, we don't seem to get on very well," said Joe.

"No, we don't," the coroner agreed snappishly. "Stand down; that will be
all."

The listening people shifted and relaxed, leaned and whispered, turning
quick eyes upon Joe, studying him with furtive wonder, as if they had
discovered in him some fearful and hideous thing, which he, moving among
them all his life, had kept concealed until that day.

Ollie followed him in the witness-chair. She related her story, framed
on the cue that she had taken from Greening's testimony and Joe's
substantiation of it, in low, trembling voice, and with eyes downcast.
She knew nothing about the tragedy until Sol called up to her, she said,
and then she was in ignorance of what had happened. Mrs. Greening had
told her when she came that Isom was killed.

Ollie was asked about the book-agent boarder, as Greening had been
asked. Morgan had left on the morning of the fateful day, she said,
having finished his work in that part of the country. She and Joe were
alone in the house that night.

The coroner spared her, no matter how far his sharp suspicions flashed
into the obscurity of the relations between herself and the young
bondman. The people, especially the women, approved his leniency with
nods. Her testimony concluded the inquiry, and the coroner addressed the
jury.

"Gentlemen," he said, "you will take into consideration the evidence you
have heard, and determine, if possible, the manner in which Isom Chase
came to his death, and fix the responsibility for the same. It is within
your power to recommend that any person believed by you to be directly
or indirectly responsible for his death, be held to the grand jury for
furthe