nothing; and he made a mess of it. 

 Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again, exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it and you could see the judge didn’t like it much. All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them: 

 “Why didn’t you go and tell what you saw?” 

 “We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we come back we found out they’d been searching for the body, so then we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it.” 

 “When was that?” 

 “Saturday night, September 9th.” 

 The judge he spoke up and says: 

 “Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions of being accessionary after the fact to the murder.” 

 The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited, and says: 

 “Your honor! I protest against this extraordi—” 

“Set down!” says the judge.

 “Set down!” says the judge, pulling his bowie and laying it on his pulpit. “I beg you to respect the Court.” 

 So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers. 

 Bill Withers, sworn, said: “I was coming along about sundown, Saturday, September 2d, by the prisoner’s field, and my brother Jack was with me and we seen a man toting off something heavy on his back and allowed it was a nigger stealing corn; we couldn’t see distinct; next we made out that it was one man carrying another; and the way it hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was somebody that was drunk; and by the man’s walk we said it was 

 Prev. P 42/54 next