f, they put their handkerchiefs
to their eyes.

All the time Ollie was following Hammer's kind leading, the prosecuting
attorney was sitting with his hands clasped behind his head, balancing
his weight on the hinder legs of his chair, his foot thrown over his
knee. Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's pounding
attempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and less
merciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end.

Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorn
condition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet his
glance, not for one wavering second. When she went to the stand she
passed him with bent head; in the chair she looked in every direction
but his, mainly at her hands, clasped in her lap.

At last Hammer seemed skirmishing in his mind in search of some stray
question which might have escaped him, which he appeared unable to find.
He turned his papers, he made a show of considering something, while the
witness sat with her head bowed, her half-closed eyelids purple from
much weeping, worrying, and watching for the coming of one who had taken
the key to her poor, simple heart and gone his careless way.

"That's all, Missis Chase," said Hammer.

Ollie leaned over, picked up one of her gloves that had fallen to the
floor, and started to leave the chair. Her relief was evident in her
face. The prosecutor, suddenly alive, was on his feet. He stretched out
his arm, staying her with a commanding gesture.

"Wait a minute, Mrs. Chase," said he.

A stir of expectation rustled through the room again as Ollie resumed
her seat. People moistened their lips, suddenly grown hot and dry.

"Now, just watch Sam Lucas!" they said.

"Now, Mrs. Chase," began the prosecutor, assuming the polemical attitude
common to small lawyers when cross-examining a witness; "I'll ask you to
tell this jury whether you were alone in your house with Joe Newbolt on
the night of October twelfth, when Isom Chase, your husband, was
killed?"

"Yes, sir."

"This man Morgan, the book-agent, who had been boarding with you, had
paid his bill and gone away?"

"Yes, sir."

"And there was absolutely nobody in the house that night but yourself
and Joe Newbolt?"

"Nobody else."

"And you have testified, here on this witness-stand, before this court
and this jury"--that being another small lawyer's trick to impress the
witness with a sense of his own unworthiness--"