nd when the
sheriff stood again to set his censorious eye upon someone responsible,
the last ripple was on the farther rows. Nobody can catch a laugh in a
crowd; it is as evasive as a pickpocket. Nobody can turn with watchful
eye upon it and tell in what face the ribald gleam first breaks. It is
as impossible as the identification of the first stalk shaken when a
breeze assails a field of grain.

The sheriff, not being deeper than another man, saw the fatuity of his
labor. He turned to the court with a clownish gesture of the hands,
expressive of his utter inability to stop this thing.

"Proceed with the case," said the judge, understanding the situation
better than the sheriff knew.

The prosecuting attorney labored away with Ollie, full of the feeling
that something masked lay behind her pale reticence, some guilty
conspiracy between her and the bound boy, which would show the lacking
motive for the crime. He asked her again about Morgan, how long she had
known him, where he came from, and where he went--a question to which
Ollie would have been glad enough to have had the answer herself.

He hung on to the subject of Morgan so persistently that Joe began to
feel his throat drying out with a closing sensation which he could not
swallow. He trembled for Ollie, fearing that she would be forced into
telling it all. That was not a woman's story, thought he, with a heart
full of resentment for the prosecutor. Let him wait till Morgan came,
and then----

But what grounds had he now for believing Morgan might come? Unless he
came within the next hour, his coming might be too late.

"You were in bed and asleep when the shot that killed your husband was
fired, you have told the jury, Mrs. Chase?" questioned the prosecutor,
dropping Morgan at last.

"Yes, sir."

"Then how did it come that when Mrs. Greening and her daughter-in-law
arrived a few minutes later you were all dressed up in a white dress?"

"I just slipped it on," said she.

"You just slipped it on," repeated the prosecutor, turning his eyes to
the jury, and not even facing Mrs. Chase as he spoke, but reading into
her words discredit, suspicion, and a guilty knowledge.

"It was the only one I had besides two old wrappers. It was the one I
was married in, and the only one I could put on to look decent in before
people," said she.

A crowd is the most volatile thing in the world. It can laugh and sigh
and groan and weep, as well as shout and storm, with