with the maize dangling heavy ears in the white moonlight; dead, with
the gold of pumpkin lurking like unminted treasure in the margin of his
field. Dead, with fat cattle in his pastures, fat swine in his
confines, sleek horses in his barn-stalls, fat cockerels on his
perch; dead, with a young wife shrinking among the shadows above his
cold forehead, her eyes unclouded by a tear, her panting breast
undisturbed by a sigh of pity or of pain.

CHAPTER VIII

WILL HE TELL?

Constable Bill Frost was not a man of such acute suspicion as Sol
Greening. He was a thin, slow man with a high, sharp nose and a
sprangling, yellow mustache which extended broadly, like the horns of a
steer. It did not enter his mind to connect Joe with the tragedy in a
criminal way as they rode together back to the farm.

When they arrived, they found Sol Greening and his married son Dan
sitting on the front steps. Mrs. Greening was upstairs, comforting the
young widow, who was "racked like a fiddle," according to Sol.

Sol took the constable around to the window and pointed out the body of
Isom stretched beside the table.

"You're a officer of the law," said Sol, "and these here primisis is now
in your hands and charge, but I don't think you orto go in that room. I
think you orto leave him lay, just the way he dropped, for the coroner.
That's the law."

Frost was of the same opinion. He had no stomach for prying around dead
men, anyhow.

"We'll leave him lay, Sol," said he.

"And it's my opinion that you orto put handcuffs on that feller," said
Sol.

"Which feller?" asked Bill.

"That boy Joe," said Sol.

"Well, I ain't got any, and I wouldn't put 'em on him if I had," said
Bill. "He told me all about how it happened when we was comin' over.
Why, you don't suspiciont he done it, do you, Sol?"

"Circumstantial evidence," said Sol, fresh from jury service and full of
the law, "is dead ag'in' him, Bill. If I was you I'd slap him under
arrest. They had words, you know."

"Yes; he told me they did," said Bill.

"But he didn't tell you what them words was about," said Sol deeply.

The constable turned to Sol, the shaft of suspicion working its way
through the small door of his mind.

"By ganny!" said he.

"I'd take him up and hand him over to the sheriff in the morning,"
advised Sol.

"I reckon I better do it," Frost agreed, almost knocked breathless by
the importance of the thing he had overlooked.

So they laid their hea