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Updated: May 8, 2025
The people, especially the women, approved his leniency with nods. Her testimony concluded the inquiry, and the coroner addressed the jury. "Gentlemen," he said, "you will take into consideration the evidence you have heard, and determine, if possible, the manner in which Isom Chase came to his death, and fix the responsibility for the same.
The law protected the bondman in that, no matter how far it disregarded his rights and human necessities in other ways. So thinking, he pushed away from the table and left the room. Isom drank a glass of water, smacked his dry lips over its excellencies, the greatest of them in his mind being its cheapness, and followed it by another. "Thank the Lord for water, anyhow!" said he.
Then he turned and shut the kitchen window and the door leading into the body of the house, leaving the burning lamp on the table to keep watch over Isom and his money. "We'll go out the front way," said Sol to Joe. "Nothing must be touched in that room till the coroner orders it. Now, don't you try to dodge me, Joe." "I've got no reason to want to dodge any man," said Joe.
The coroner, a quick, sharp little man with a beard of unnatural blackness, thick eyebrows and sleek hair, helped him along with a question now and then. "There was nobody in the room but Joe Newbolt when you arrived?" "Nobody else no livin' body," replied Sol. "No other living body. And Joe Newbolt was standing beside the body of Isom Chase, near the head, you say?" "Yes, near Isom's head."
Before Sol could adjust his program to meet this unexpected exigency, she demanded: "Well, what's the matter with Isom?" "Dead," said Sol, dropping his voice impressively. "You don't mean well, shades of mercy, Isom dead! What was it cholera-morbus?" "Killed," said Sol; "shot down with his own gun and killed as dead as a dornix." "His own gun! Well, sakes who done it?"
Then he took his hat from the floor at his feet and went out, leaving Isom hammering again at the jowl, this time with the handle of his fork, in the hope of dislodging a bit of gristle which clung to one end. Joe's hope leaped ahead to supper, unjustified as the flight was by the day's developments.
"I suppose Isom put it away somewhere around the barn," said Joe. "Maybe he did, Joe." "I'll go down there and see if I can find it," he said.
The bag of money which had been found with Isom's body had been introduced by the state for identification by Sol. Hammer took up the matter with a sudden turn toward sharpness and belligerency. "You say that this is the same sack of money that was there on the floor with Isom Chase's body when you entered the room?" he asked. "That's it," nodded Sol.
Perhaps Isom Chase would have been different, reflected the lawyer, if fate had yielded him his desire and given him a son; perhaps it would have softened his hand and mellowed his heart in his dealings with those whom he touched; perhaps it would have lifted him above the narrow strivings which had atrophied his virtues, and let the sunlight into the dark places of his soul.
Isom was too self-centered, and unconscious of his wife's uncommon prettiness, to be jealous or suspicious of Morgan's late goings or early returns. If a man wanted to pay him four dollars a week for the pleasure of carrying up water, cutting stove-wood or feeding the calves, the fool was welcome to do it as long as his money held.
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