But, Ben, we beat her that time!" and
she chuckled anew.

The man answered not a word, and listened to the tumult within.

It is seldom, doubtless, that the patience of a coroner's jury is
subjected to so strong a strain. But the information which had so far
been elicited was hardly more than the bare circumstance which the
body presented,--a man had ridden here, a stranger, and he was dead.
If the girl knew more than this, it would necessitate some care in the
examination to secure the facts. She was young, singularly willful and
irresponsible, and evidently overcome by grief, or fear, or simply
horror. When she was asked to look at the face of the stranger, she
only caught a glimpse of it, as if by accident, and turned away,
pulling her white bonnet down over her face, and declaring that she
would not. "I hev viewed him wunst, an' I won't look at him again,"
she protested, with a burst of sobs.

"Now set down in this cheer, daughter, an' tell us what ye know about
it all,--easy an' quiet," said the coroner in a soothing, paternal
strain.

"Oh, nuthin', nuthin'!" exclaimed the girl, throwing herself into the
chair in the attitude of an abandonment of grief.

"Air ye cryin' 'kase ye war 'quainted with him ennywise?" demanded one
of the jurymen, with a quickening interest. He was a neighbor; that
is, counting as propinquity a distance of ten miles.

The girl lifted her head suddenly. "I never seen him till yestiddy,"
she protested steadily. "I be a heap apter ter weep 'kase my
'quaintances _ain't_ dead!" She gave him a composed, sarcastic smile,
then fell to laughing and crying together.

To the others the discomfiture of their _confrere_ was the first touch
of comedy relief in the tragic situation. They cast at one another a
glance of appreciation trenching on a smile, and the abashed
questioner drew out a plug of tobacco, and with a manner of
preoccupation gnawed a bit from it; then replaced it in his pocket,
with a physical contortion which caused the plank on which the jury
were seated to creak ominously, to the manifest anxiety of the
worthies ranged thereon.

"How did you happen to see the man?" he asked, as if he had perceived
no significance in her previous answer.

"'Kase I didn't happen ter be blind," her half-muffled voice replied.
Her arm was thrown over the back of the chair, and her face was hidden
on her elbow.

The coroner interposed quickly: "Where were you goin', an' what did
you see?"