At the eleventh cabin they found it. Burke straightened up suddenly from a box in which he had been fumbling, and exclaimed, ‘By Jesus!’ very softly, and, ‘By Jesus!’ He turned about, and laid the knife on the table in the full light of the lamp. Monroe, seeing it, glanced sharply at the negro man standing there by the table, and then took a couple of steps toward the door, to block it. The negro looked down at the object, for the moment dispassionately and without more than casual interest.

  Mr. Munn picked up the knife, and, bending toward the flame of the lamp, turned it in his hands. ‘That looks like it,’ he observed; and then Burke seemed, lounging, to be closer to the negro man than before.

  ‘Mr. Monroe,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘I’ll be obliged if you’ll get that other knife. It’s in my saddlebags.’

  Monroe slipped out the door.

  Mr. Munn continued to turn the knife slowly over and over in his hands, handling it gingerly and contemplatively. ‘Is this yours?’ he asked the negro man, but without looking at him, his eyes fixed, instead, on the knife.

  ‘I been having it round here,’ the man admitted.

  ‘You been having it round?’ Mr. Munn echoed.

  ‘Yassuh.’

  ‘Long?’ Mr. Munn still did not look at the man, looking at the knife, which he turned over and over in his hand.

  ‘I reckin as you might say so,’ the negro said.

  Monroe re-entered the room, in his hand a knife that shone bright and new in the light. He gave the knife to Mr. Munn. Mr. Munn held the two knives side by side, comparing their shapes.

  ‘They got them same little square-headed brass brads and I figgered we done had it.’

  ‘It’s got the trade-mark,’ Mr. Munn pointed out. ‘You can see that.’

  Burke reached over and picked up the knife which he had found, and inspected it. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s right.’ He tossed it onto the table.

  Mr. Munn raised his eyes and looked directly at the negro. ‘Where did you get this knife?’ he demanded.

  The negro looked down at the knife, which lay where Burke had dropped it, and then at his questioner. ‘Boss,’ he began — and his tongue licked out tentatively to wet his lips, a sudden childish and innocent pink against the black skin and the parched-looking grayness of the lips — ‘boss, a great-big ole bullfrog done found me that-air knife. Hit wuz ——’

  ‘Sweet Jesus!’ Burke breathed softly.

  ‘— hit wuz this-a-way. I wuz goen down to slop me some shoats I got me, one day last summer long ’bout sun. I seen a great-big ole bullfrog a-hoppen along this side that-air branch whar my shoats does they walleren, and I figgered I’d ketch him and I set that-air bucket down and I started towards him and he kept on a-hoppen and a-hoppen, and I thowed my hat at him and I tried to ketch him, but he kept on a-hoppen. ’Fore I knowed hit he hopped right up under that-air cawn-crib, right up under whar the log wuz a-setten on the hunk of limerock, and I retched up under and grabbed holt of his laig and pulled him out, and ’fore-God-a-mighty, he drug out that-air knife, and I say, now, I never, but I seen hit wuz a good knife, so I taken hit and cut off his laigs and put ’em in my pocket and thowed that ole frog in the dirt, then I say, naw, I’ll give him to my shoats, so I picked him up and put him in the slop. He kept on a-sloshen round in the slop, but he could’n swim none to speak of, and I thowed him to them shoats. Hit wuz that big ole red shoat got him, I seen him when she done hit. She done taken him ——’

  The negro man hesitated, looking at Mr. Munn’s face. Mr. Munn was nodding slightly at Burke.

  ‘ ’Fore God,’ the negro declared, his voice rising now, ‘ ’fore God, I done found hit lak I say. Ast my wife thar,’ and he pointed toward the bed.

  ‘Lak he say,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘He come to the house, and he say, look, a great-big ole bullfrog ——’

  ‘Yassuh,’ the man broke in, ‘that big ole bullfrog. Shore, boss, I never knowed that knife wuz yore’n. If’n I knowed that knife wuz yore’n, I’ — Burke laid his hand on the man’s arm, but the man did not seem to notice — ‘shore would a-brung hit back. I’d a-found whar yore place wuz, and brung hit back and give hit to you. I never wants nuthen not rightful and truly mine in God’s sight, and I’d a-brung hit back. If’n I knowed ——’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ Mr. Munn interrupted petulantly and resentfully.

  It was almost dawn when they got outside. A cold pallor was on the sky in the east over the far woods. They made the negro man, handcuffed, ride behind Burke. The men rode without talking, their faces now slack and heavy with sleep. The negro ceased his protestations and did not speak to them again after they put him on the horse, but sometimes he seemed to be mumbling to himself.

  The case against Bunk Trevelyan was dismissed at noon the next day. The knife found in the cabin of the negro was identified by Mr. Little as one of the order from which Trevelyan had made his purchase. It was further established that the type of knife in question had been sold only by the A. C. Little Hardware Company; and a telegram from the jobbers in Nashville established the fact that the type had only been manufactured since early summer. By eleven-thirty the sheriff had come back from the cabin of the negro, where further investigations were being made. He and his men had, earlier, taken the negro out to the cabin and had made him indicate the precise place where, according to his story, the frog found the knife. Then one of the deputies had taken the negro back to town, handcuffed to the buggy seat. The sheriff and his men had searched the cabin and the shed and the crib. On the north side of the crib, diagonally across from the place indicated by the negro, they had found a large silver watch on a plaited thong, stuck in a crevice between two pieces of limestone on which the crib was set. The watch was identified as Duffy’s, by Duffy’s son. After the defendant had told on the stand of the theft of the knife from the table in his kitchen, and after the knife and the watch had been produced and identified, Mr. Munn moved that the case against Harris Trevelyan be dismissed. The motion was granted.

  Mr. Munn walked toward the chair where Trevelyan sat. He forced himself to smile as he put his hand out to Trevelyan, saying,

  ‘Well, and that’s that, and I hope it’ll be the end of your troubles.’

  Trevelyan rose slowly from his chair, looked for an instant at Mr. Munn’s outstretched hand as though he did not comprehend the gesture, and then offered his own hand. ‘Kin I go now?’ he asked.

  Mr. Munn nodded, and moved toward the aisle. Trevelyan’s wife was standing there with a hand on the railing, looking toward her husband. But when Mr. Munn approached her, she turned to him and seemed to be about to speak. She was wearing that blue crêpe-de-Chine dress, he noticed, and an old brown coat which hung loosely from her shoulders. ‘I’m much obliged,’ she said, her voice flat.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Mr. Munn replied, feeling suddenly embarrassed and, somehow, unworthy.

  ‘I’m much obliged,’ she repeated.

  ‘That’s all right. We just had luck,’ Mr. Munn told her, and then realized that the woman was not looking at him but at Trevelyan, who was approaching them. When he was close enough, she reached out and laid her hand on his arm, fleetingly, and then withdrew it. Mr. Munn noticed how the sleeve of the too-big, old brown coat came down almost to the knuckles of her hand.

  ‘Le’s git goen,’ Trevelyan said to her.

  Mr. Munn moved down the aisle, and they followed him. He forced his way through the crowd at the door, and then went down the corridor and out into the yard. He turned to them and called, ‘Well, good-bye.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ Trevelyan replied. The woman said nothing, staring at him.

  He had not taken five steps before he heard the man’s voice calling, ‘Kin you wait a minute, please?’ Trevelyan approached him slowly, and Mr. Munn, watching that meaty, impassive face, and the small blue eyes that squinted now a little against the light, was struck with a sudden irritation at the man. He did not want to see him again. And he was tired, for he had had only two hours’ sleep.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  Trevelyan looked at him a moment, and then said, ‘You’re calcerlaten to come out and git my crop.’ There was no inflection of question in the words; they were a statement rendered impartially, judicially, flatly, almost casually.

  Mr. Munn studied his face and the slightly squinting eyes, but there was nothing there. Then he replied, ‘No, I wasn’t figuring on taking your crop.’

  ‘You sent yore niggers out to cut hit and fire hit. That’s whut my wife said.’

  ‘Your wife couldn’t do it herself.’

  ‘You ain’t aimen to take hit.’

  ‘No, I’m not going to take it,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘I sent those niggers out there because I didn’t want to see that tobacco go to waste. I didn’t want to get anything out of this case, or expect to. I took it because I didn’t think you killed Duffy.’

  ‘You ain’t aimen to take hit.’ The expression of Trevelyan’s face had not changed, and he spoke in that same flat and judicial tone of statement.

  ‘No, I said I wasn’t.’

  Trevelyan seemed about to turn away; then he said, ‘Much obliged.’

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ Mr. Munn added. He hesitated, making up his mind, for the idea had just that instant come to him. ‘. . . if you can see your way clear to it, I’d like to see you put your crop in the Association. If you can see your way clear to it.’

  Trevelyan raised his eyes ruminatively toward the almost-bare branches of the maples in the yard. ‘Hit ain’t fer my likes, I reckin. I ain’t got nuthen but a little pissy-ant crop,’ he said. ‘Hit ain’t nuthen to speak of.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’ Mr. Munn took a step toward him. ‘It’s not the size of a man’s crop that matters. We want the man in. The Association is for everybody, everybody that raises any tobacco. And the Association will see you through the winter till the price is right and we can sell. It’s not how much tobacco——’ Mr. Munn broke off suddenly. The man was not looking at him, but toward the sky beyond the bare boughs. He felt embarrassed and angry at himself. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you to join unless you see your way to it.’

  Trevelyan lowered his gaze until his eyes met the eyes of Mr. Munn. ‘Since I got too big fer my pappy to beat, ain’t no man ever named to me whut I could do and whut I couldn’t do. But,’ he said, ‘I reckin I’ll join.’

  ‘You won’t regret it,’ Mr. Munn said.

  ‘Mebbe not,’ Trevelyan replied.

  ‘I hope you’ll use your influence for the Association. Talk about it to people. Let them know you came in.’

  ‘Hit ain’t no secret,’ Trevelyan remarked.

  ‘Good-bye,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘Somebody’ll come and sign you up.’

  ‘Good-bye,’ the man answered, and Mr. Munn watched him move off to join his wife, who had been standing there waiting, with her hands clasped together at the level of her breast.

  Mr. Munn approached the group of men who clustered about the foot of the courthouse steps, and nodded to them. Two men detached themselves from the group and fell into step beside Mr. Munn. ‘Le’s get a drink, Perse,’ one of the men said. ‘We’re just going to have a quick one before we get back to work.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  ‘You oughter celebrate,’ the other man said, ‘getting your boy off and all.’

  ‘It’s the other feller ought to celebrate,’ the first man put in. ‘He’s got something to celebrate about, not going to Eddyville, where they don’t come back. I’ll bet he’s tighter’n a tick on a rich widder-woman right now, laying up one of these alleys here in town.’

  ‘No,’ Mr. Munn said, ‘he’s gone home with his wife.’ He took pleasure, he discovered, in being able to say that.

  ‘Well, you ought to celebrate, then,’ the first man rejoined. ‘Just one quick one. Somebody ought to celebrate.’

  ‘I was thinking about going out home. I’m tired.’

  ‘One quick one won’t take long, Perse. Then you can go home. It won’t take but fifteen minutes. We’re just going to have one and then get on back to work. You know how it is.’

  Mr. Munn found himself walking across the street with them. He was tired, after all. A drink would pick him up. And maybe a sandwich. They entered the saloon together. The first man ordered the drinks.

  Two other men were leaning against the bar and talking to the bartender. One of the men Mr. Munn didn’t know, though he recalled seeing him now and then on the street and in the lobby of the hotel. He knew the other one all right — Joe Means, a loud-mouthed fellow who claimed to sell insurance and real estate and who walked up and down the street all day, calling out, ‘Hi, there, Tom!’ to somebody passing, or ‘Hi, there, Baldy!’ and slapping men on the shoulder while his big, slack lips parted to say, ‘I sure God got one to tell you now, that’s a fact!’

  ‘Hi, there,’ Means called, and lounged down the bar toward them.

  The two men with Mr. Munn said hello, but Mr. Munn merely nodded. The man whose name Mr. Munn did not know approached them, and thrust his way into the group, hanging his arm across Joe Means’s shoulder. ‘Hello, Alec,’ he said to one of the men with Mr. Munn, and ‘Hello, Morris.’

  ‘Do you all know each other?’ the man named Alec asked, turning from Mr. Munn to the newcomer. ‘This is Mr. Holt ——’

  Holt set his drink on the bar and thrust out his hand, saying: ‘Sure I know Munn. I been seeing him around town. I seen him this morning over to the courthouse. Joe and me was over there, wasn’t we, Joe?’ All the while he was gripping Mr. Munn’s hand and pumping it up and down with an absent-minded, mechanical motion.

  ‘I’m glad to know you,’ Mr. Munn said, and with a slight effort disengaged his hand. He was sorry he had come.

  ‘And pour another one here,’ Alec was demanding, indicating the empty glass in front of Mr. Munn.

  ‘No, no more for me,’ Mr. Munn insisted, but the whisky was already in the glass.

  ‘It’ll do you good,’ Alec told him.

  ‘What I always say,’ Holt said, ‘is there ain’t nothing better’n a good slug of whisky for putting a man on his feet except two good slugs of whisky. Now ain’t that what I always say, eh, Joe? That’s what I always ——’

  ‘Besides, you ought to celebrate,’ Alec asserted, ‘getting your man off and all.’

  ‘You sure got him off, now. Joe and me was over there, wasn’t we, Joe?’

  ‘Yeah, now,’ Joe Means said, ‘we saw you hang it on the nigger, all right.’

  ‘You sure hung it on him now, I’ll say that.’

  ‘It looks like he did it,’ Mr. Munn replied.

  ‘It sure looks that way now,’ Joe Means said, and laughed.

  ‘One less nigger, that’s what I always say. What I say is, just get you a good lawyer and he’ll find you a good nigger to hang it on, all right. That’s what I say,’ and Holt reached out to prod Mr. Munn in the ribs with a blunt, brotherly motion, inviting him to join the laughter.

  Mr. Munn did not laugh. He looked at the man’s round, loose face and the open, gold-tooth-studded mouth, from which the snorts of laughter came, and thought, My God, he looks exactly like Joe Means, he might be Joe Means’s brother; the town’s full of them. Then he realized that his own face was set stiffly in an expression of amiability and merriment. He glanced quickly at the mirror back of the bar, and saw there his face grinning, a long, swarthy face, with dark eyes, and with the grinning lips drawn back over the long teeth.

  ‘He had the knife,’ Mr. Munn said coldly, swinging away from the image in the mirror toward the men. ‘And the watch.’

  ‘You bet,’ Joe Means exclaimed. ‘You sure hung it on him.’

  ‘And you didn’t have to, either,’ Holt said, ‘but I always say it never hurts nobody to take pains.’ He prodded Mr. Munn in the side again. ‘And you didn’t have to, to get your man off, not with all them Association men on the jury. My God, they’d hang a jury all week to get your man off. That’s what I was saying, that feller was a gone gosling, but hell, I said, not with all them Association men on the jury ——’

  Mr. Munn set his empty glass down on the bar, again caught a glimpse in the mirror of his own face with its smile, and with a full sweep of his arm smacked the man solidly across the mouth. Taken entirely off his balance, the man staggered back one step, and fell to the floor in a sitting position.

  At the very instant when the blow landed, Mr. Munn was filled with surprise. He had not contemplated the act. The thought of it had scarcely grazed his mind, as it were, and had in that instant become action. He saw his hand still in the air before him, feeling that it was detached from him and responsible, and even as the man fell, he took a step forward, on his lips the words, ‘I’m sorry, I ——’ Then he saw the man’s face, and stopped. It only showed an expression of blank surprise, the mouth hanging open. A little blood was gathering at the corners of the mouth. He stopped because of that expression of surprise; and anger began to mount in him, as he realized that that surprise was not merely physical shock from the blow, but a surprise, profound and fundamental, that a blow on that provocation should have been struck at all.

  The man on the floor clambered to his feet and lunged toward Mr. Munn, but Alec grabbed him and shoved him back.

  ‘Jesus!’ Joe Means cried, in a voice filled with a kind of peevish reproach, ‘what do you go and do that for?’

  Holt was struggling, but without much force, in the arms of Alec and the other man. Blood was running down his chin now, and a few splotches had fallen on his shirt front.

  ‘He says I framed a nigger and fixed a jury, then he wonders why I hit him,’ Mr. Munn said, not as though in answer to the question from Joe Means, but half absent-mindedly. Then he added, without fervor, ‘My God!’