doted, heard this talk. He knew
of the feeling of the different ones connected with the trouble. It was
talked not only around the store but in the Hargis home. When the father
wasn't about Beach and his mother mulled it over. Beach never was a lad
to work. "Why should I?" he argued. "Pa's got plenty. And I aim to get
what's coming to me while the old man's living."

If the father protested that Beach was squandering too much money, the
mother shielded her son and wheedled Jim Hargis into giving him more.

"He's been pampered too much, Louellen," Judge Hargis often remonstrated
with his wife. "Should we spare the rod and spoil the child?" And
sometimes Evylee, Beach's sister, would plead with her father to forgive
Beach once again for drunkenness and waywardness. Evylee had been away
to school at Oxford University in Ohio near Cincinnati. She loved the
nice things of life, particularly learning. Judge Hargis was an
indulgent father. He wanted his children to have the best, both in
education and dress. He wanted his boy Beach to go through college. But
Beach had no fondness for book-learning or fine clothes.

"I've give up trying to do anything with him, Louellen," said Jim Hargis
to his wife one day when they were together in the sitting room of their
home. "Look yonder there he goes." He pointed a condemning finger at
Beach reeling drunk along the sidewalk.

"Don't fret, Pa," Mrs. Hargis pleaded with her husband. "He's young.
He'll mend his ways. Don't forsake him."

That was the day before the homicide.

Next day Beach was still drunk. He swaggered into the store, leered
about for his father, and not seeing him stumbled on past the racks
where the guns lay, past the shelves laden with cartridges and shells,
on into the rear room where coffins were lined in a somber row. Judge
Hargis kept a general store that carried in stock most anything you
could call for from baking soda and beeswax to plows, guns and coffins.
Beach didn't notice the black-covered coffins or the guns. He stumbled
along to a corner of the wareroom where he slumped on a keg of nails.
There he sat a while mumbling to himself. His eyes were bloodshot, his
face swollen from a fall or a fight. "The old man punched me in the
jaw," he kept repeating, "and I'll--I'll--"

Frightened clerks hurried past him in waiting upon customers. No one
tried to listen or understand. Beach kept on mumbling. After awhile he
staggered out again. Later that same day h