Joe see the admiration and esteem in which he
held him on account of the distinguished charge under which he was
confined. He annoyed Joe to such extent that he asked the sheriff that
evening to shift them about if possible.

"Well, I'll move him if you say so, but I left him there because I
thought he'd be company for you," said the sheriff. "I don't mind
talkin' in this jail when there's no more than two in it."

"I don't want to talk," said Joe.

So the horse-thief was removed to the farther end of the corridor, where
he kept up a knocking on the bars of his cell during the early hours of
the night, and then turned off his diversion by imitating the sound of a
saw on steel, which he could do with his tongue against his teeth with
such realism as to bring the sheriff down in his nightshirt, with a
lantern in one hand and a shotgun in the other.

Joe's second night in jail passed very much like the first, when they
had brought him there all bewildered and dazed. There was a grated
window in the wall above his reach, through which he could see the
branches of an elm-tree, blowing bare of leaves; beyond that a bit of
sky. Joe sat on the edge of his cot that second night a long time after
the stars came out, gazing up at the bar-broken bit of sky, reviewing
the events leading up to his situation.

There was no resentment in him against the jury of his neighbors whose
finding had sent him to jail under the cloud of that terrible
accusation; he harbored no ill-feeling for the busy, prying little
coroner, who had questioned him so impertinently. There was one person
alone, in the whole world of men, to blame, and that was Curtis Morgan.
He could not have been far away on the day of the inquest; news of the
tragic outcome of Ollie's attempt to join him must have traveled to his
ears.

Yet he had not come forward to take the load of suspicion from Joe's
shoulders by confessing the treacherous thing that he had plotted. He
need not have revealed the complete story of his trespass upon the honor
of Isom Chase, thought Joe; he could have saved Ollie's name before the
neighbors; and yet relieved Joe of all suspicion. Now that Isom was
dead, he could have married her. But Morgan had not come. He was a
coward as well as a rascal. It was more than likely that, in fear of
being found out, he had fled away.

And suppose that he never came back; suppose that Ollie should not elect
to stand forth and explain the hidden part of t