"She moved from that chair to this one over here"--Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner--"and just sat there with her hands held together and looking down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John wanted to put in a telephone; and at that she started to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me--scared." At sound of a moving pencil the man who was telling the story looked up. "I dunno--maybe it wasn't scared," he hastened; "I wouldn't like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I guess that's all I know that you don't." * * * He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as if relaxing. Every one moved a little. The county attorney walked toward the stair door. "I guess we'll go upstairs first--then out to the barn and around there." He paused and looked around the kitchen. "You're convinced there was nothing important here?" he asked the sheriff. "Nothing that would--point to any motive?" The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-convince himself. "Nothing here but kitchen things," he said, with a little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things. The county attorney was looking at the cupboard--a peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall, and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After a moment he drew his hand away sticky. "Here's a nice mess," he said resentfully. The two women had drawn nearer, and now the sheriff's wife spoke. "Oh--her fruit," she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for sympathetic understanding. She turned back to the county attorney and explained: "She worried about that when it turned so cold last night. She said the fire would go out and her jars might burst." Mrs. Peters' husband broke into a laugh. "Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder and worrying about her preserves!" The young attorney set his lips. "I guess before we're through with her she may have something more serious than preserves to worry about." "Oh, well," said Mrs. Hale's husband, with good-natured superiority, "women are used to worrying over trifles." The two women moved a little closer together. Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed suddenly to remember his manners--and think of his future. "And yet," said he, with the gallantry of a young politician, "for all their worries, what would we do without the ladies?" The women did not speak, did not unbend. He went to the sink and began washing his hands. He turned to wipe them on the roller towel--whirled it for a cleaner place. "Dirty towels! Not much of a housekeeper, would you say, ladies?" He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under the sink. "There's a great deal of work to be done on a farm," said Mrs. Hale stiffly.