Joe was pestered out of his calm and dignified attitude. He twisted in his chair, where many a confounded and beset soul had writhed before him, and ran his fingers through his long hair, disturbing it into fantastic disorder. His breath came through his open lips, his shoulders sagged wearily, his long back was bent as he drooped forward, whipping his fagged mind to alertness, guarding every word now, weighing every answer a deliberate while. Sweat drenched his face and dampened the thick wisps of hair. He scooped the welling moisture from his forehead with his crooked finger and flung it to the floor with a rustic trick of the fields. Sam Lucas gave him no respite. Moment by moment he pressed the panting race harder, faster; moment by moment he grew more exacting, imperative and pressing in his demands for unhesitating replies. While he harassed and urged the sweating victim, the prosecutor's eyes narrowed, his thin lips pressed hard against his teeth. The moment was approaching for the final assault, for the fierce delivery of the last, invincible dart. The people felt it coming, and panted with the acute pleasures of expectation; Hammer saw its hovering shadow, and rose to his feet; Mrs. Newbolt suffered under the strain until she rocked from side to side, unconscious of all and everybody but herself and Joe, and groaned. What were they going to do to Joe--what were they going to do? Sam Lucas was hurling his questions into Joe's face, faster and faster. His voice was shaded now with the inflection of accusation, now discredit; now it rose to the pitch of condemnation, now it sank to a hoarse whisper of horror as he dwelt upon the scene in Isom Chase's kitchen, the body of old Isom stretched in its own blood upon the floor. Joe seemed to stumble over his replies, to grope, to flounder. The agony of his soul was in his face. And then, in a moment of tortured desperation he rose from his seat, tall, gaunt, disordered, and clasped his hand to his forehead as if driven to the utmost bound of his endurance and to the outer brink of his resources. The prosecutor paused with leveled finger, while Joe, remembering himself, pushed his hair back from his brow like one waking from a hot and troubled sleep, and resumed his seat. Then suddenly, in full volume of voice, the prosecutor flung at him the lance for which he had been weakening Joe's defenses through those long and torturing hours. "Tell this jury what the 'words' were which you have testified passed between you and Isom Chase after he made the threat to kill you, and before he ran for the gun!" Hammer bellowed forth an objection, which was quietly overruled. It served its purpose in a way, even though it failed in its larger intent, for the prosecutor's headlong assault was checked by it, the force of his blow broken.