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Updated: June 26, 2025
This refusal of Joe's to talk out and explain everything was a display of the threadbare Newbolt dignity, people said, an exhibition of which they had not seen since old Peter's death. But it looked more like bull-headedness to them. "Don't the darned fool know he's pokin' his head under the gallus?" they asked. What was the trouble between him and Isom about?
"Madam, I must ask you not to interrupt the proceedings," said the coroner. "Order in the court!" commanded the constable in his deepest official voice. "Oh, shut your fool mouth, Bill Frost!" said Mrs. Newbolt scornfully. "Never mind, Mother," counseled Joe. "I'll be all right. They have to do what they're doing, I suppose."
Scarcely behind Joe Newbolt stood that hitherto weak woman, Ollie Chase. It called for courage to do what she had done. She had only to keep her peace, and hide whatever pity she felt and pain she suffered on account of the lad who stood ready to sacrifice his life for her, to proceed upon her way clean in the eyes of men.
"Oh, circumstance your granny!" she stopped him pettishly. Mrs. Newbolt emptied her pan among the scrambling fowls by turning it suddenly upside down. That done, she reached behind her and put it on the table. Her face had grown hard and severe, and her eyes were fierce. "Wouldn't believe my boy!" said she bitterly. "Are you going over that way now?" "Guess I'll be ridin' along over."
"How have you stood it?" he said to his wife; adding, under his breath, "If she's nasty to you, I'll wring her neck!" She was very nasty. "I'm not a party to it," Mrs. Newbolt said; she sat, panting, on a deeply cushioned sofa, and her wheezy voice came through quivering double chins; her protruding pale eyes snapped with anger.
He had planned to make that tree the nucleus of an orchard, which was to grow and spread until it covered the old home place, the fields adjoining, and lifted the curse of poverty from the Newbolt name. It had been a boyish plan which his bondage to Isom Chase had set back. He had not given it up for a day while he labored in Chase's fields.
Through all those years he had watched the struggles of Peter Newbolt, who never seemed able to kick a foothold in the steps of success, and he had seen him die at last, with his unrealized schemes of life around him. And now Peter's boy was in jail, charged with slaying old Isom Chase. Death had its compensations, at the worst, reflected the colonel. It had spared Peter this crowning disgrace.
He has refused to tell you what they were, refused against the kindly counsel of the court, the prayers of his aged mother, the advice of his own attorney, and of his best friends. Joe Newbolt has refused to repeat those words to you, gentlemen of the jury, but I will tell you what the substance of them was."
Newbolt was tasting the candy, and the next minute all was in delightful uproar of stickiness and excitement, and Johnny, exploding into wild cackles of laughter, felt quite young for the next hour.
Sarah Newbolt enjoyed in her saturnine, brooding way the warmth of April sunshine and the stirring greenery of awakening life now beginning to soften the brown austerity of the dead winter earth. Beside her kitchen wall the pink cones of rhubarb were showing, and the fat buds of the lilacs, which clustered coppicelike in her dooryard, were ready to unlock and flare forth leaves.
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