Benny
she set on one side of him and Aunt Sally on the other,
and they had veils on, and was full of trouble. But
Tom he set by our lawyer, and had his finger in every-
wheres, of course. The lawyer let him, and the judge
let him. He 'most took the business out of the law-
yer's hands sometimes; which was well enough, be-
cause that was only a mud-turtle of a back-settlement
lawyer and didn't know enough to come in when it
rains, as the saying is.
They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the
prostitution got up and begun. He made a terrible
speech against the old man, that made him moan and
groan, and made Benny and Aunt Sally cry. The way
HE told about the murder kind of knocked us all stupid
it was so different from the old man's tale. He said
he was going to prove that Uncle Silas was SEEN to
kill Jubiter Dunlap by two good witnesses, and done it
deliberate, and SAID he was going to kill him the very
minute he hit him with the club; and they seen him hide
Jubiter in the bushes, and they seen that Jubiter was
stone-dead. And said Uncle Silas come later and
lugged Jubiter down into the tobacker field, and two
men seen him do it. And said Uncle Silas turned out,
away in the night, and buried Jubiter, and a man seen
him at it.
I says to myself, poor old Uncle Silas has been lying
about it because he reckoned nobody seen him and he
couldn't bear to break Aunt Sally's heart and Benny's;
and right he was: as for me, I would 'a' lied the
same way, and so would anybody that had any feeling,
to save them such misery and sorrow which THEY warn't
no ways responsible for.
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