"'Bout half-past ten; maybe a little sooner." This was all the information Mr. Sanders could get, and it was a great deal more than he wanted in one particular. He knew that Gabriel Tolliver was innocent of the killing; but the fact that his name was called by the dying man was almost as damaging as an ante-mortem accusation would have been. Mr. Sanders rode to Ike Varner's cabin, a few hundred yards away. Tying his horse to the fence on the opposite side of the road, he entered the house without ceremony. "Who is that? La! Mr. Sanders, you sho did skeer me," exclaimed Edie. "Why, when did you come? I would as soon have spected to see a ghost!" "You'll see 'em here before you're much older," replied Mr. Sanders, grimly. "They ain't fur off. Wher's Ike?" "La! ef you know anything about Ike you know more than I does. I ain't laid eyes on that nigger man, not sence----" She paused, and looked at Mr. Sanders with a smile. "Not sence the night Hotchkiss was killed," said Mr. Sanders, completing her sentence for her. "La, Mr. Sanders! how'd you know that? But it's the truth: I ain't never seen Ike sence that night." "I know a heap more'n you think I do," Mr. Sanders remarked. "Hotchkiss was talkin' to you at the gate thar when he was shot. What was he sayin'?" The woman was a bright mulatto, and, remembering her own designs and desires so far as Hotchkiss was concerned, her face flushed and she turned her eyes away. "Why, he wan't sayin' a word, hardly; I was doin' all the talkin'. I was settin' on the step there, an' I seen him passin', an' hollad at him. I ast him if he wouldn't have a drink of cold water, an' he said he would, an' I took it out to the gate, an' while I was talkin', they shot him. They certainly did." "Did you ask Ike about it?" Mr. Sanders inquired. "La! I ain't seen Ike sence that night," exclaimed Edie, flirting her apron with a coquettish air that was by no means unbecoming. "Now, Edie," said Mr. Sanders, with a frown to match the severity of his voice, "you know as well as I do, that when you heard the pistol go off, and saw what had happened, you run in the house an' flung your apern over your head." It was a wild guess, but it was close to the truth. "La, Mr. Sanders! you talk like you was watchin' me. 'Twa'n't my apern, 'twas my han's. I didn't have on no apern that night; I had on my Sunday frock." "An' you know jest as well as I do that Ike come in here an' stood over you, an' said somethin' to you." "No, sir; he didn't stand over me; I was here"--she illustrated his position by her movements--"an' when Ike come in, he stood over there." "What did he say?" "He said," replied Edie, smiling to show her pretty teeth, "'If you want him, go out there an' git him.' Yes, sir, he said that. La! I never heard of a nigger killin' a white man on _that_ account; did you, Mr. Sanders?" "I don't know as I ever did," replied Mr. Sanders, regarding her with an expression akin to pity. "But times has changed."