Hammer brought out, with many confidential glances at the jury, the distance between Ollie's room and the kitchen; the fact that she had her door closed, that she had gone to bed heavy with weariness, and was asleep long before midnight; that she had been startled by a sound, a strange and mysterious sound for that quiet house, and had sat up in her bed listening. Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, even before she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage to run down the hall and call Joe. Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawing from her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a great deal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow. She seemed reluctant to discuss Isom's faults, anxious, rather, to ease them over after the manner of one whose judgment has grown less severe with the lapse of time. Had he ever laid hands on her in temper? Hammer wanted to know. "Yes." Her reply was a little more than a whisper, with head bent, with tears in her sad eyes. Under Hammer's pressure she told about the purchase of the ribbon, of Isom's iron hand upon her throat. The women all over the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation of old Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evident reluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven, starved, and stingy life under Isom's roof, they put their handkerchiefs to their eyes. All the time Ollie was following Hammer's kind leading, the prosecuting attorney was sitting with his hands clasped behind his head, balancing his weight on the hinder legs of his chair, his foot thrown over his knee. Apparently he was bored, even worried, by Hammer's pounding attempts to make Isom out a man who deserved something slower and less merciful than a bullet, years before he came to his violent end. Through it all Joe sat looking at Ollie, great pity for her forlorn condition and broken spirit in his honest eyes. She did not meet his glance, not for one wavering second. When she went to the stand she passed him with bent head; in the chair she looked in every direction but his, mainly at her hands, clasped in her lap. At last Hammer seemed skirmishing in his mind in search of some stray question which might have escaped him, which he appeared unable to find. He turned his papers, he made a show of considering something, while the witness sat with her head bowed, her half-closed eyelids purple from much weeping, worrying, and watching for the coming of one who had taken the key to her poor, simple heart and gone his careless way. "That's all, Missis Chase," said Hammer. Ollie leaned over, picked up one of her gloves that had fallen to the floor, and started to leave the chair. Her relief was evident in her face. The prosecutor, suddenly alive, was on his feet. He stretched out his arm, staying her with a commanding gesture. "Wait a minute, Mrs. Chase," said he.