No wonder she looked at him wild and fearful, people said. It was more than anybody could understand, that sudden development of fierce passion and treachery in a boy who always had been so shy and steady. No wonder she gazed at him that way, poor thing! Of course they did not dream how far they were from interpreting that look in the young widow's eyes. There was one question in her life that morning, and one only, it seemed. It stood in front of the future and blocked all thought of it like a heavy door. Over and over it revolved in her mind. It was written in fire in her aching brain. When they put Joe Newbolt on the witness-stand and asked him how it happened, would he stand true to his first intention and protect her, or would he betray it all? That was what troubled Ollie. She did not know, and in his face there was no answer. Sol Greening was the first witness. He told again to the jury of his neighbors the story which he had gone over a score of times that morning. Mrs. Newbolt nodded when he related what Joe had told him, as if to say there was no doubt about that; Joe had told her the same thing. It was true. The coroner, a quick, sharp little man with a beard of unnatural blackness, thick eyebrows and sleek hair, helped him along with a question now and then. "There was nobody in the room but Joe Newbolt when you arrived?" "Nobody else--no livin' body," replied Sol. "No other living body. And Joe Newbolt was standing beside the body of Isom Chase, near the head, you say?" "Yes, near Isom's head." "With his hat in his hand, as if he had just entered the room, or was about to leave it?" Sol nodded. "Do you know anything about a man who had been boarding here the past week or two?" The coroner seemed to ask this as an afterthought. "Morgan," said Sol, crossing his legs the other way for relief. "Yes, I knowed him." "Did you see him here last night?" "No, he wasn't here. The old lady said he stopped in at our house yesterday morning to sell me a ready-reckoner." Sol chuckled, perhaps over what he considered a narrow escape. "I was over at Shelbyville, on the jury, and I wasn't there, so he didn't sell it. Been tryin' to for a week. He told the old lady that was his last day here, and he was leavin' then." "And about what time of night was it when you heard the shot in Isom Chase's house, and ran over?" "Along about first rooster-crow," said Sol. "And that might be about what hour?" "Well, I've knowed 'em to crow at 'leven this time o' year, and ag'in I've knowed 'em to put it off as late as two. But I should judge that it was about twelve when I come over here the first time last night." Sol was excused with that. He left the witness-chair with ponderous solemnity. The coroner's stenographer had taken down his testimony, and was now leaning back in his chair as serenely as if unconscious of his own marvelous accomplishment of being able to write down a man's words as fast as he could talk.