you?"
The face of the young man burned, and he looked at the coroner and then at the jurymen, as if he would like to challenge the whole crew, but the color that showed in his face was the flush of shame, or, so thought Mr. Byrd, and in his reply, when he gave it, there was a bitterness of self-scorn that reminded the detective more of the mortification of a gentleman caught in an act of meanness than the secret alarm of a man who had been beguiled into committing a dastardly crime.
"Mrs. Clemmens was evidently a woman of some spirit," said he, forcing out his words with sullen desperation. "She may have used sharp language; I believe indeed she did; but she did not know who I was, for – for I pretended to be a seller of patent medicine, warranted to cure all ills, and she told me she had no ills, and – and – Do you want a man to disgrace himself in your presence?" he suddenly flashed out, cringing under the gaze of the many curious and unsympathetic eyes fixed upon him.
But the coroner, with a sudden assumption of severity, pardonable, perhaps, in a man with a case of such importance on his hands, recommended the witness to be calm and not to allow any small feelings of personal mortification to interfere with a testimony of so much evident value. And without waiting for the witness to recover himself, asked again:
"What did the widow say, and with what words did you leave?"
"The widow said she abominated drugs, and never took them. I replied that she made a great mistake, if she had any ailments. Upon which she retorted that she had no ailment, and politely showed me the door. I do not remember that any thing else passed between us."
His tone, which had been shrill and high, dropped at the final sentence, and by the nervous workings of his lips, Mr. Byrd perceived that he dreaded the next question. The persons grouped around him evidently dreaded it too.
But it was less searching than they expected, and proved that the coroner preferred to approach his point by circuitous rather than direct means.
"In what room was the conversation held, and by what door did you come in and go out?"
"I came in by the front door, and we stood in that room" – pointing to the sitting-room from which he had just issued.
"Stood! Did you not sit down?"
"No."
"Stood all the time, and in that room to which you have just pointed?"
"Yes."
The coroner drew a deep breath, and looked at the witness long and searchingly. Mr. Hildreth's way of uttering this word had been any thing but pleasant, and consequently any thing but satisfactory. A low murmur began to eddy through the rooms.
"Gentlemen, silence!" commanded the coroner, venting in this injunction some of the uncomfortable emotion with which he was evidently surcharged; for his next words were spoken in a comparatively quiet voice, though the fixed severity of his eye could have given the witness but little encouragement.
"You say," he declared, "that in coming through the lane you encountered no one. Was this equally true of your return?"
"Yes, sir; I believe so. I don't remember. I was not looking up," was the slightly confused reply.
"You passed, however, through the lane, and entered the main street by the usual path?"
"Yes."
"And where did you go then?"
"To the depot."
"Ah!"
"I wished to leave the town. I had done with it."
"And did you do so, Mr. Hildreth?"
"I did."
"Where did you go?"
"To Albany, where I had left my traps."
"You took the noon train, then?"
"Yes, sir."
"Which leaves precisely five minutes after twelve?"
"I suppose so."
"Took it without stopping anywhere on the way?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you buy a ticket at the office?"
"No, sir."
"Why?"
"I did not have time."
"Ah, the train was at the station, then?"
Mr. Hildreth did not reply; he had evidently been driven almost to the end of his patience, or possibly of his courage, by this quick fire of small questions.
The coroner saw this and pressed his advantage.
"Was the train at the station or not when you arrived there, Mr. Hildreth?"
"I do not see why it can interest you to know," the witness retorted, with a flash of somewhat natural anger; "but since you insist, I will tell you that it was just going out, and that I had to run to reach it, and only got a foothold upon the platform of the rear car at the risk of my life."
He looked as if he wished it had been at the cost of his life, and compressed his lips and moved restlessly from side to side as if the battery of eyes levelled upon his face were so many points of red-hot steel burning into his brain.
But the coroner, intent upon his duty, released not one jot of the steady hold he had taken upon his victim.
"Mr. Hildreth," said he, "your position as the only person who acknowledges himself to have been in this house during the half-hour that preceded the assault, makes every thing you can tell us in reference to your visit of the highest importance. Was the widow alone, do you think, or did you see any thing – pause now and consider well —any thing that would lead you to suppose there was any one beside her and yourself in the house?"
It was the suggestion of a just man, and Mr. Byrd looked to see the witness grasp with all the energy of despair at the prospect of release it held out. But Mr. Hildreth either felt his cause beyond the reach of any such assistance, or his understanding was so dulled by misery he could not see the advantage of acknowledging the presence of a third party in the cottage. Giving a dreary shake of the head, he slowly answered:
"There may have been somebody else in the house, I don't know; but if so, I didn't hear him or see him. I thought we were alone."
The frankness with which he made the admission was in his favor, but the quick and overpowering flush that rose to his face the moment he had given utterance to it, betrayed so unmistakable a consciousness of what the admission implied that the effect was immediately reversed. Seeing that he had lost rather than gained in the opinions of the merciless inquisitors about him, he went back to his old bravado, and haughtily lifted his head.
"One question more," resumed the coroner. "You have said that Mrs. Clemmens was a spirited woman. Now, what made you think so? Any expression of annoyance on her part at the interruption in her work which your errand had caused her, or merely the expression of her face and the general way she had of speaking?"
"The latter, I think, though she did use a harsh word or two when she showed me the door."
"And raised her voice?"
"Yes,
