Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way he told about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid it was so different from the old man’s tale. He said he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was seen to kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it deliberate, and said he was going to kill him the very minute he hit him with the club; and they seen 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! 

Our lawyer.

 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 

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