Then he went on and told about it, and said it happened the day me and Tom come—along about sundown. He said Jubiter pestered him and aggravated him till he was so mad he just sort of lost his mind and grabbed up a stick and hit him over the head with all his might, and Jubiter dropped in his tracks. Then he was scared and sorry, and got down on his knees and lifted his head up, and begged him to speak and say he wasn’t dead; and before long he come to, and when he see who it was holding his head, he jumped like he was ’most scared to death, and cleared the fence and tore into the woods, and was gone. So he hoped he wasn’t hurt bad. 

 “But laws,” he says, “it was only just fear that gave him that last little spurt of strength, and of course it soon played out and he laid down in the bush, and there wasn’t anybody to help him, and he died.” 

 Then the old man cried and grieved, and said he was a murderer and the mark of Cain was on him, and he had disgraced his family and was going to be found out and hung. But Tom said: 

 “No, you ain’t going to be found out. You didn’t kill him. One lick wouldn’t kill him. Somebody else done it.” 

 “Oh, yes,” he says, “I done it—nobody else. Who else had anything against him? Who else could have anything against him?” 

 He looked up kind of like he hoped some of us could mention somebody that could have a grudge against that harmless no-account, but of course it warn’t no use—he had us; we couldn’t say a word. He noticed that, and he saddened down again, and I never see a face so miserable and so pitiful to see. Tom had a sudden idea, and says: 

 “But hold on!—somebody buried him. Now who—” 

 He shut off sudden. I knowed the reason. It give me the cold shudders when he said them words, because right away I remembered about us seeing Uncle Silas prowling around with a long-handled shovel away in the night that night. And I knowed Benny seen him, too, because she was talking about it one day. The minute Tom shut off he changed the subject and went to begging Uncle Silas to keep mum, and the rest of us done the same, and said he must, and said it wasn’t his business to tell on himself, and if he kept mum nobody would ever know; but if it was found out and any harm come to him it would break the family’s hearts and kill them, and yet never do anybody any good. So at last he promised. We was all of us more comfortable, then, and went to work to cheer up the old man. We told him all he’d 

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