After Miss Lucy Mayhew there was old Doctor Potter, who had been picked up the night of the raid, going home from a call. Now, in the witness box, he was still furious, still fuming and biting his words off, as though no time had elapsed and the outrage were still at hand. Then there were the other men who had been picked up, and the station agent, and a drummer who had been staying at the hotel and who had watched everything from his window. For a moment Mr. Munn thought that this might be a man the prosecution was counting on. He had seen a tall man on a bay horse, or what looked like a bay horse, he said, for the light wasn’t so good. The man seemed to be in charge, or something. And the man was a tall man, and lanky. ‘Like him,’ he said, and nodded toward Doctor MacDonald.

  But there was nothing there, Mr. Munn thought. It was too easy for Wilkins, when he took the witness for cross-examination.

  ‘You say it was a tall man you saw?’ Wilkins asked conversationally of the drummer.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the drummer said.

  ‘By the way, Mr. Tupper,’ Wilkins asked, still conversationally, ‘where did you say you’re from?’

  ‘Huntsville, Alabama,’ the drummer replied.

  ‘Well, I’ve never been in Alabama, and I can’t say exactly how men grow down there’ — and he hesitated, to cast an appraising glance over the witness, who was a shortish man, and thin — ‘but round here the country produces a right smart of pretty well-set-up fellows. Like my client, there.’ He hesitated again, waiting for the laughter, which came. Suddenly, he flung out an accusing finger at the witness, and his voice mounted: ‘Did you positively, beyond shadow and peradventure of a doubt, identify this man?’

  ‘Well ——’ the man paused.

  ‘Well,’ Wilkins snapped; then added casually: ‘I just didn’t want you, Mr. Tupper, to be making any suggestions to these gentlemen’ — he indicated the jury — ‘that you wouldn’t back up. In here, or,’ he added in an ingratiating tone, ‘outside.’

  ‘I object, Your Honor’ — the prosecutor was on his feet. ‘I object; that’s intimidation of the witness!’

  Blandly, in a pained surprise, Wilkins turned. ‘I didn’t mean a thing,’ he declared.

  One after another they mounted the stand, and raised the right hand, and listened while the words were said to them: ‘— solemnly swear — will be the truth — nothing but the truth. So help you God.’

  ‘I do,’ each one said, clearly or mumblingly, in answer to that aimless, dreary intonation.

  How many times, Mr. Munn thought, how many times he had heard those words! Day after day, in this room, addressed to all sorts of people, who raised the right hand, swearing. He thought: the truth. Each person there, on the stand, today, was telling the truth. The officials, with their pieces of paper on which the figures were written, down to a last penny, they were telling the truth: their truth. That was what the event was to them. And the constable, the truth to him — what had stuck in his mind and what he would always mention, for years to come now, when he told anybody about that night, what would stay in his mind when he was very old and his past had begun to flow from him and leave only a few little, dead fragments, stranded out of time — the truth to him was the way the men had had trouble with their masks when they tried to spit. And Miss Mayhew would always remember the tangle of cut wires in the office, just that, and the man’s hand holding her arm coming downstairs. That was the truth to her. But her truth, and the constable’s truth, and the truths of the others, they were not his own, which was, if any one thing seizable and namable, that reeling moment of certainty and fulfillment when the air had swollen ripely with the blast. But that had gone. Like the blink of an eye; and would not come back. Even that self he had been had slipped from him, and could only be glimpsed now, paling and reproachful, in fits as when the breeze worries a rising mist.

  The truths of those people were not the truth that had been his that night; but that truth was his no longer. The truth: it devoured and blotted out each particular truth, each individual man’s truth, it crushed truths as under a blundering tread, it was blind.

  He scarcely listened to the witnesses. He watched Doctor MacDonald leaning back in his chair, at ease, it seemed, and attentive only out of courtesy. What was Doctor MacDonald’s truth? He had never asked himself that question before. Or he watched Cordelia. Her truth, what was it?

  The witnesses mounted the stand; and descended. Wilkins seemed bored, and confident. For witness after witness, he waived cross-examination, or asked some single perfunctory question, contemptuous in its perfunctoriness.

  Until Mr. Al Turpin came to the stand. But even then, at first, Wilkins did not change.

  Al Turpin was a beefy man, blockishly built, with a swarthy skin and thinning, greasy-looking hair. On top of his overalls, he wore a brown wool coat. He would speak heavily and deliberately for a moment or two, then stop in the middle of a sentence, as though he had forgotten what he was there for, as though if he ceased to speak the scene before him might fade into unreality. While the people watched him, he would blink slowly. Then, at a word from the prosecutor, he would shake his head apologetically, humbly, like a man started out of a drowse, and would wet his lips and resume.

  A man moved down the aisle, almost on tiptoe, and approached the table where Wilkins and Doctor MacDonald sat. He leaned over the table, talking earnestly to Wilkins. At a gesture from Wilkins, Doctor MacDonald leaned forward, too. Mr. Munn watched them, trying to place the man who had come in. Then he remembered him as a cousin of Wilkins.

  Wilkins looked at his watch.

  Doctor MacDonald was nodding at something the man was saying, and Wilkins snapped shut his watch. Then the man went out, tiptoeing up the aisle, for the heavy, deliberate voice of Al Turpin was still speaking, giving the testimony. ‘— I was a member of the Association,’ he was saying, ‘and I had my crop in the Association. Going on thirty-five thousand pounds, it was, and fair to middling, the season being what it was and ——’

  ‘I object, Your Honor,’ Wilkins said, very loud.

  Al Turpin turned his slow gaze upon him, with an expression of relief, almost, or of gratitude.

  ‘I object that this testimony is irrelevant to this case. The poundage of Mr. Turpin’s crop and his relations with the Association ——’

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  Wilkins sat down, but his hands grasped the edge of the table before him.

  Al Turpin resumed. What he got for his crop wasn’t bad as some years, he said, but the waiting, that was bad, and people said the price would go down, that the Association was losing members.

  Wilkins objected, but was overruled.

  ‘Then I heard some talk around,’ Al Turpin continued, ‘how some men over in Hunter County was getting together to do something about the way things was ——’

  ‘Was this represented to you as a terrorist organization?’ the prosecutor demanded.

  ‘I object,’ Wilkins said, rising and waving his arm. ‘My opponent is leading the witness!’

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  ‘But Your Honor ——’ Wilkins did not sit down.

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  ‘Will you please answer the question?’ the prosecutor said to Al Turpin.

  ‘I can’t say as it was, if I rightly know. They just said it was some folks getting together and gonna do something. That’s what ——’

  ‘I object that this is hearsay and should not be admitted as evidence!’ Wilkins exclaimed, almost shouting.

  ‘Objection sustained,’ the judge said, then added: ‘The witness will please confine himself to matters of direct observation.’

  Al Turpin looked about him, working his big hands slowly on his knees. ‘I been doing the best I know,’ he said. He paused, seemed to sink in upon himself, then began: ‘One day a fellow come to me, I can’t say for sure what day it was, but it was long ’fore setting-out time last spring. He told me his name, but it’s done slipped my mind, it looks like. But he was a sorter middle-size man, you might say’ — he stopped, broodingly, for a moment — ‘and sandy-haired. And he said to me, Mr. Turpin, you don’t look like no man would let his-self be knocked down and spit on. I been a peace-abiding man, but I said, Well, ain’t no man wiped his foot on me. And he said, Now, over in Hunter County ——’

  Wilkins shoved his chair back with a sudden scraping on the dry floor. ‘I object! This is hearsay, pure and simple. This middle-size man’ — and he pronounced the words with a hint of mimicry of Al Turpin’s voice — ‘this sandy-haired man whose name the witness can’t remember ——’

  The judge struck the desk with his gavel.

  ‘Objection sustained,’ he ruled. ‘But the attorney for the defense will observe the dignity of this court.’

  ‘Did you or did you not, Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor demanded, ‘become a member of any secret society?’ He turned away from the witness and looked, with a sudden glint of cunning and satisfaction, at the packed roomful of people, and then at Wilkins.

  Al Turpin did not answer. He seemed to be lost, fumblingly, within himself.

  Wilkins was looking at his watch.

  ‘Answer yes or no!’

  Al Turpin managed to fix his glance, painful and appealing, upon the face of the prosecutor. ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘And was not the purpose of this society to destroy plant beds and barns and to force membership in the Association of Growers of Dark Fired Tobacco?’

  ‘I object!’ Wilkins almost shouted. ‘He is leading the witness.’

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  The prosecutor leaned toward Al Turpin: ‘Answer yes or no!’

  ‘Yes,’ Al Turpin replied.

  ‘Was the name of this society The Free Farmers’ Brotherhood for Protection and Control?’

  Al Turpin’s painful gaze left the prosecutor’s face and slowly moved over the other faces, more distant, there before him. His bulk shifted slightly in the chair, making it creak in the quietness of the room.

  ‘I object! That is irrelevant.’

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  The prosecutor looked at Al Turpin demandingly.

  ‘Yes,’ Al Turpin said.

  Wilkins, Mr. Munn observed, was looking at his watch, covertly, beneath the level of the table.

  ‘Now, Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor went on, dropping into a tone of familiarity and lounging closer to the witness, ‘just describe the circumstances of joining this’ — he hesitated, then pronounced the words with almost a grimace, as though they had an evil taste on the tongue — ‘this Free Farmers’ Brotherhood for Protection and Control. Or whatever it is.’

  Wilkins seemed about to rise; then restrained himself.

  Turpin moved his tongue over his lips, looked at the prosecutor, and then cast a sudden, wide, wild glance over the fixed faces.

  ‘Mr. Turpin ——’

  Al Turpin let his head sink a little, humbly, and said: ‘It was one night last spring; I can’t say as I recollect the day it was, but it was in May. I went down the dirt road out past my house, like they said for me to, and I seen a man on a horse standing there on one side the road, and he said to me, Fair weather. And I said to him, Fairer tomorrow. Like they told me to. And I went on till I come to that old tumble-down church. A nigger church it used to be till it got too tumble-down. And I went round to the back and I seen some horses ——’

  Mr. Munn thought, It’s coming. He felt the weight of the silence behind him. He looked at Doctor MacDonald. He had not moved.

  ‘— and hitched my horse to a sapling. Sassafras, I reckon. I stood there and listened. A horse tromped a little over in the bushes. Then I started walking towards the church ——’

  A long time back, Mr. Munn thought, how long; but it was as before him now, suddenly, in his mind, that open space before the dark mill, that open, lighter space before which he had paused that night, the road dipping down across it beside the fallen rail fence, and distantly, the sound of water on stones. That momentary prickling of the spine as he moved into that space, alone, that was with him now, the eyes watching from shadow.

  ‘— and after while they took me inside and stood me in front of a light with it in my face so I couldn’t see nuthen, and they said the oath for me to say, a little bit at a time. And I said it.’ His voice stopped, ponderously, as though of its own dead weight. Then, his bulk shifting, he said: ‘I didn’t know how it was gonna be, what I was getting into. I never would taken it. Not a oath before God.’ His voice stopped, leaving him there, awkward, motionless.

  ‘Mr. Turpin, repeat to the best of your ability the oath.’

  ‘I object!’ Wilkins was on his feet. ‘He’s leading the witness.’

  ‘Objection overruled!’

  ‘Mr. Turpin,’ the prosecutor said sharply.

  ‘A thing,’ Al Turpin said, ‘a thing don’t stick in a man’s head so good. I can’t say the words, like they were. But I’ll say what they went on to say. It said ——’

  ‘I object!’ Wilkins cried. ‘This testimony is not admissible. This oath — the witness admits, here in open court, that he cannot remember it. If the welfare of my client is to depend ——’

  The gavel struck the desk. ‘Mr. Wilkins!’ the judge exclaimed.

  ‘Your Honor?’

  ‘You will observe the proper dignity of this court, Mr. Wilkins.’

  ‘Your Honor,’ Mr. Wilkins said, gravely, elaborately, ‘I object to the testimony of the witness on the grounds of inadmissibility.’

  The judge leaned forward, wearily, and poured himself a glass of water from the china pitcher, which had blue flowers painted upon it. While he drank, the people in the room watched him. He put the glass down, and wiped his lips with a handkerchief. ‘The jury will retire,’ he said then, and stuffed the handkerchief into his pocket.

  His eyes seemed to be closed while the jurymen went out. They moved awkwardly, clumpingly, scraping their shoes on the boards. When the door had closed behind them, the judge roused himself and said, ‘Mr. Wilkins, will you present your reasons why the testimony of the witness should not be admitted into the proceedings of this court?’

  It was ruled that the testimony concerning the oath was admissible. But when the jury had been summoned, and the men were moving back to their place, looking covertly at the faces of the people before them as though to surprise there the knowledge which had been denied them, the clock in the tower of the courthouse struck. It struck four times, the resonance of each impact dying away, thinning into a drowsy hum like the sound of distant bees. At the motion of Wilkins, over the protest of the prosecutor, the court was adjourned.

  The people rose, and began to move sluggishly toward the doors. Wilkins was sitting beside Doctor MacDonald, talking earnestly to him. Doctor MacDonald was shaking his head.

  ‘I’ll wait,’ Mr. Munn told Professor Ball, and Professor Ball nodded, not saying anything, not even looking at Mr. Munn, and moved away. Cordelia, at his side, clutched his arm. The people thinned out in the courtroom. Doctor MacDonald went away with two deputies, leaving Wilkins there alone at his table, on which the scattered papers lay.

  Mr. Munn started to go over and speak to him, then turned away. He left the courtroom, and walked down the dim corridors and across the yet crowded yard to the jail. He sat on the cot, aware of that faint, sweetish stench, and listened while Doctor MacDonald moved slowly back and forth in the cell, talking. The man who had come into the courtroom, that cousin of Wilkins, had come to tell Wilkins that the soldiers had rounded up just that afternoon six men, and every one of them had been in the band Turpin belonged to. That was what had started Wilkins to stalling, Doctor MacDonald said. ‘They got Turpin to turn all of them in. This place’ll be running over by night. They just brought another fellow in before you came. He was in Turpin’s band, too, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s easy,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘They made a deal with Turpin When they gave him bail we could have guessed. They’ve got that arson indictment on Turpin, and they’re making a deal.’

  ‘If you want to see what makes it stink in here worse’n usual,’ Doctor MacDonald observed, ‘you can go look down at the far end. They just put Turpin in.’ He stopped moving about, and reached out to grasp strongly one of the bars of the door. ‘But you can bet they put him in one by himself. They want to keep him all in one piece.’

  Mr. Munn rose abruptly, and put out his hand. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to find out how bad it was.’

  ‘Morbid, huh?’ Doctor MacDonald remarked, and grinned.

  Mr. Munn went back to his office. He sat there, without making a motion, at his desk, and stared out at the leafing trees. He thought, those trees changed in the spring and you didn’t notice it, really, until the change was complete; and in the fall, when the leaves dropped away, day after day, until, all at once, you saw the final bareness. He saw the shotgun in the corner, and the rifle. He thought of the deer hunt, down near Reelfoot, and the men around the stove, in the cabin, at night. And of that last afternoon hunting birds with Mr. Christian. He stayed in his office, and the light faded over the roofs across the square. He hated to go to the hotel and tell Professor Ball. He hated to look at Cordelia, knowing what he knew.

  The next morning Mr. Munn woke up very early. The light was just beginning to come. He lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, and thought of the cold, anonymous light unfolding, slowly, over the countryside, over the fields and roads and hedges and the woods, that would be dark longest, and over the roofs of the town, and in bedrooms like this where people slept; but he was not asleep. He felt very tired, but wakeful with a detachment and clarity of mind, as when a man comes out of a fever.

  At six o’clock Professor Ball came to his door and he got up. Professor Ball said that he hadn’t been able to sleep either. They were the first people in the dining-room. They ate without talking. When he had finished, Mr. Munn said that he had to go down to the office a minute to leave a note for his secretary, and would come back in time to go with them to the courthouse. Professor Ball said that he would go up and see if the girls were ready for breakfast.