You see, Tom was
just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it
was Arkansaw law for a prisoner to choose anybody he
wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom had had Uncle
Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching
it and you could see the judge didn't like it much.
All that the mud-turtle got out of Lem and Jim was
this: he asked them:
"Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?"
"We was afraid we would get mixed up in it our-
selves. And we was just starting down the river
a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon as we
come back we found out they'd been searching for the
body, so then we went and told Brace Dunlap all
about it."
"When was that?"
"Saturday night, September 9th."
The judge he spoke up and says:
"Mr. Sheriff, arrest these two witnesses on suspicions
of being accessionary after the fact to the murder."
The lawyer for the prostitution jumps up all excited,
and says:
"Your honor! I protest against this extraordi --"
"Set down!" says the judge, pulling his bowie and
laying it on his pulpit. "I beg you to respect the
Court."
So he done it. Then he called Bill Withers.
BILL WITHERS, sworn, said: "I was coming along
about sundown, Saturday, September 2d, by the
prisoner's field, and my brother Jack was with me
and we seen a man toting off something heavy on
his back and allowed it was a nigger stealing
corn; we couldn't see distinct; next we made out
that it was one man carrying another; and the way
it hung, so kind of limp, we judged it was
somebody that was drunk; and by the man's walk we
said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had
found Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was
always trying to reform him, and was toting him
out of danger.
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