Ollie stood there, her hands clenched at her sides, no stirring of pity in her heart for her husband with the stain of blood upon his harsh, gray beard. In that moment she was supremely selfish. The possibility of accusation or suspicion in connection with his death did not occur to her. She was too shallow to look ahead to that unpleasant contingency. The bright lure of liberty was in her eyes; it was dancing in her brain. As she looked at Joe's back the moment he stood with hand on the door, her one thought was: "Will he tell?" Joe came back and stood beside the lifeless form of Isom, looking down at him for a moment, pity and sorrow in his face. Then he tiptoed far around the body and took up his hat from the floor where it had fallen in Isom's scramble for the sack of gold. "What are we going to do?" asked Ollie, suddenly afraid. "I'll go after the doctor, but he can't help him any," said Joe. "I'll wake up the Greenings as I go by and send some of them over to stay with you." "Don't leave me here with it--don't leave me!" begged Ollie. "I can't stay here in the house with it alone!" She shrank away from her husband's body, unlovely in death as he had been unloved in life, and clung to Joe's arm. But a little while had passed since Isom fell--perhaps not yet five minutes--but someone had heard the shot, someone was coming, running, along the hard path between gate and kitchen door. Ollie started. "Listen!" she said. "They're coming! What will you say?" "Go upstairs," he commanded, pushing her toward the door, harshness in his manner and words. "It'll not do for you to be found here all dressed up that way." "What will you tell them--what will you say?" she insisted, whispering. "Go upstairs; let me do the talking," he answered, waving her away. A heavy foot struck the porch, a heavy hand beat a summons on the door. Ollie's white dress gleamed a moment in the dark passage leading to the stairs, the flying end of her veil glimmered. "Come in," called Joe. Sol Greening, their neighbor, whose gate was almost opposite Isom's, whose barn was not eighty rods from the kitchen door, stood panting in the lamplight, his heavy beard lifting and falling on his chest. "What--what's happened--who was that shootin'--Isom! God A'mighty, is he hurt?" "Dead," said Joe dully, standing hat in hand. He looked dazedly at the excited man in the door, whose mouth was open as he stared fearfully at the corpse. "How? Who done it?" asked Greening, coming in on tiptoe, his voice lowered to a whisper, in the cautious fashion of people who move in the vicinity of the sound-sleeping dead. The tread of living man never more would disturb old Isom Chase, but Sol Greening moved as silently as a blowing leaf. "Who done it?" he repeated. "He did," answered Joe. "_He_ done it!" repeated Greening, looking from the rifle, still clutched in Isom's hand, to the gold in the crook of his arm, and from that to Joe's blanched face. "_He_ done it!"