the jailer's
windows and then came the sheriff, who began to take out the sash.
Already the frightened crowd had gathered closer again and now a hush
came over it, followed by a rustling and a murmur. Something was going
to happen. Faces and gun-muzzles thickened at the port-holes and at the
windows; the line of guards turned their faces sidewise and upward;
the crowd on the fence scuffled for better positions; the people in the
trees craned their necks from the branches or climbed higher, and there
was a great scraping on all the roofs. Even the black crowd out on the
hills seemed to catch the excitement and to sway, while spots of intense
blue and vivid crimson came out here and there from the blackness when
the women rose from their seats on the ground. Then--sharply--there was
silence. The sheriff disappeared, and shut in by the sashless window as
by a picture frame and blinking in the strong light, stood a man with
black hair, cropped close, face pale and worn, and hands that looked
white and thin--stood bad Rufe Tolliver.

He was going to confess--that was the rumour. His lawyers wanted him to
confess; the preacher who had been singing hymns with him all morning
wanted him to confess; the man himself said he wanted to confess; and
now he was going to confess. What deadly mysteries he might clear up if
he would! No wonder the crowd was eager, for there was no soul there but
knew his record--and what a record! His best friends put his victims no
lower than thirteen, and there looking up at him were three women whom
he had widowed or orphaned, while at one corner of the jail-yard stood
a girl in black--the sweetheart of Mockaby, for whose death Rufe was
standing where he stood now. But his lips did not open. Instead he
took hold of the side of the window and looked behind him. The sheriff
brought him a chair and he sat down. Apparently he was weak and he was
going to wait a while. Would he tell how he had killed one Falin in the
presence of the latter's wife at a wild bee tree; how he had killed a
sheriff by dropping to the ground when the sheriff fired, in this way
dodging the bullet and then shooting the officer from where he lay
supposedly dead; how he had thrown another Falin out of the Court House
window and broken his neck--the Falin was drunk, Rufe always said, and
fell out; why, when he was constable, he had killed another--because,
Rufe said, he resisted arrest; how and where he had killed Red-necked
Johnson