Sympathy seemed to be lacking in the crowd. Everybody was against Joe, that was attested by the glum faces and silence which met her on every hand. She was amazed at their stupidity. There they stood, people who had seen Joe grow up, people who knew that a Newbolt would give his last cent and go hungry to meet an obligation; that he would wear rags to pay his debts, as Peter had done, as Joe was doing after him; that he would work and strive night and day to keep fair his honorable name, and to preserve the honest record of the family clear and clean. They all knew that, and they knew that a Newbolt never lied, but they hunched their backs and turned away their heads as if they thought a body was going to hit them when she spoke. It disgusted her; she felt like she could turn loose on some of them with their own records, which she had from a generation back. She approached the buggy as Joe took up the lines and prepared to drive out of the gate. "I don't see why they think you done it, son, it's so unreasonable and unneighborly of them," said she. "Neighborly!" said Joe, with sudden bitterness in his young voice. "What am I to them but 'the pore folks' boy'? They didn't believe me, Mother, but when I get a chance to stand up before Judge Maxwell over at Shelbyville, I'll be talking to a gentleman. A gentleman will understand." That sounded like his father, she thought. It moved her with a feeling of the pride which she had reflected feebly for so many years. "I hope so, son," said she. "If you're not back in a day or two, I'll be over to Shelbyville." "Drive on, drive on!" ordered Bill, the old black revolver in his hand. The crowd was impressed by that weapon, knowing its history, as everybody did. Greening's more or less honorable father had carried it with him when he rode in the train of Quantrell, the infamous bushwhacker. It was the old man's boast to his dying day that he had exterminated a family of father and five sons in the raid upon Lawrence with that old weapon, without recharging it. Joe drove through the open gate without a look behind him. His face was pale, his heart was sick with the humiliation of that day. But he felt that it was only a temporary cloud into which he had stepped, and that clearing would come again in a little while. It was inconceivable to him how anybody could be so foolish as to believe, or even suspect, that he had murdered Isom Chase. The assembled people having heard all there was to hear, and seen all there was to see at the gate, began to straggle back to the farmhouse to gossip, to gape, and exclaim. To Greening and his family had fallen the office of comforting the widow and arranging for the burial, and now Sol had many offers to sit up with the corpse that night.