g, like a quick wind in a cornfield, moved over
the room when Ollie's name was called. Then silence ensued. It was more
than a mere listening silence; it was impertinent. Everybody looked for
a scandal, and most of them hoped that they should not depart that day
with their long-growing hunger unsatisfied.

Ollie took the witness-chair with an air of extreme nervousness. As she
settled down in her cloud of black skirt, black veil, and shadow of
black sailor hat, she cast about the room a look of timid appeal. She
seemed to be sounding the depths of the listening crowd's sympathy, and
to find it shallow and in shoals.

Hammer was kind, with an unctuous, patronizing gentleness. He seemed to
approach her with the feeling that she might say a great deal that would
be damaging to the defendant if she had a mind to do it, but with gentle
adroitness she could be managed to his advantage. Led by a question
here, a helping reminder there, Ollie went over her story, in all
particulars the same as she had related at the inquest.

Hammer brought out, with many confidential glances at the jury, the
distance between Ollie's room and the kitchen; the fact that she had her
door closed, that she had gone to bed heavy with weariness, and was
asleep long before midnight; that she had been startled by a sound, a
strange and mysterious sound for that quiet house, and had sat up in her
bed listening. Sol Greening had called her next, in a little while, even
before she could master her fright and confusion and muster courage to
run down the hall and call Joe.

Hammer did well with the witness; that was the general opinion, drawing
from her a great deal about Joe's habit of life in Isom's house, a great
deal about Isom's temper, hard ways, and readiness to give a blow.

She seemed reluctant to discuss Isom's faults, anxious, rather, to ease
them over after the manner of one whose judgment has grown less severe
with the lapse of time.

Had he ever laid hands on her in temper? Hammer wanted to know.

"Yes." Her reply was a little more than a whisper, with head bent, with
tears in her sad eyes. Under Hammer's pressure she told about the
purchase of the ribbon, of Isom's iron hand upon her throat.

The women all over the room made little sounds of pitying deprecation of
old Isom's penury, and when Hammer drew from her, with evident
reluctance on her part to yield it up, the story of her hard-driven,
starved, and stingy life under Isom's roo