een him hide Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that
Jubiter was stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and lugged
Jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two men seen him do it. And
said Uncle Silas turned out, away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and
a man seen him at it.

I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying about it because
he reckoned nobody seen him and he couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's
heart and Benny's; and right he was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the
same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling, to save them such
misery and sorrow which THEY warn't no ways responsible for. Well, it
made our lawyer look pretty sick; and it knocked Tom silly, too, for
a little spell, but then he braced up and let on that he warn't
worried--but I knowed he WAS, all the same. And the people--my, but it
made a stir amongst them!

And when that lawyer was done telling the jury what he was going to
prove, he set down and begun to work his witnesses.

First, he called a lot of them to show that there was bad blood betwixt
Uncle Silas and the diseased; and they told how they had heard Uncle
Silas threaten the diseased, at one time and another, and how it got
worse and worse and everybody was talking about it, and how diseased got
afraid of his life, and told two or three of them he was certain Uncle
Silas would up and kill him some time or another.

Tom and our lawyer asked them some questions; but it warn't no use, they
stuck to what they said.

Next, they called up Lem Beebe, and he took the stand. It come into
my mind, then, how Lem and Jim Lane had come along talking, that time,
about borrowing a dog or something from Jubiter Dunlap; and that brought
up the blackberries and the lantern; and that brought up Bill and Jack
Withers, and how they passed by, talking about a nigger stealing Uncle
Silas's corn; and that fetched up our old ghost that come along about
the same time and scared us so--and here HE was too, and a privileged
character, on accounts of his being deef and dumb and a stranger, and
they had fixed him a chair inside the railing, where he could cross his
legs and be comfortable, whilst the other people was all in a jam so
they couldn't hardly breathe. So it all come back to me just the way it
was that day; and it made me mournful to think how pleasant it was up to
then, and how miserable ever since.

LEM BEEBE, sworn, said--"I was a-coming along, that day,
secon