University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE CORONER'S VERDICT.

Semantha Brewster, wife of the deceased,
being duly summoned and sworn, suddenly
scandalized all judicial propriety by exclaiming,
without waiting to be questioned:

“It was Ruth did it!”

“What!” exclaimed the coroner, not more
startled at the idea than at the mode of conveying
it.

“It was Ruth that killed him,” repeated
Semantha doggedly; and before the horrified
silence that fell upon the company could be
broken by question or exclamation, she went
on:

“There was bad blood between them. She
was jealous of me because I was in her
mother's shoes, and he set by me, same as a
man had ought to by his wife, and so there

was trouble between them. Finally, the
night before it happened, he got real mad at
her, and said he'd take her off to live with a
woman over to Milvor that he'd spoke to
about taking her, and she up and declared
she wouldn't go. They had an awful time
about it, and I heard Ruth stamping about
her room pretty much all night. But yesterday
morning he tackled up, and made me
pack all her things in a trunk, and took her
off with him. He had his rifle in the back of
the wagon, going to get it fixed over to Milvor,
and he made her sit over there on her
trunk, because he was so provoked with her
he couldn't bear to have her on the seat alongside
of him. So then, I expect, when they got
into the woods, she up and shot him.”

“Could she use a rifle?” asked the coroner,
still too much astonished to notice the informality
of these proceedings.

“I guess you'd think so if you'd seen her,
as I have, shooting at a mark down in the
meadow, along with him, when they was good
together. She'd hit it as well as any man,
almost,” said Semantha coolly.

“Well—but—where is the child now?'
stammered the coroner.

“There, again,” rejoined Semantha, triumphantly;
“she's run off; and what would
she do that for if she didn't feel she'd done
what she hadn't ought to?”

“Now, Mrs. Brewster, this isn't the way to
give evidence. You are to begin at the beginning,
and tell all that you know of your
husband's leaving home, and what followed
relating to it; but do not give any opinions or
arguments, or accuse any body of any thing.
Go on, if you please.”

And the coroner, feeling that he had vindicated
the judicial dignity, and restored things
to their true position, leaned back in his chair,
and listened complacently.

Mrs. Brewster, thus adjured, began with her
story, and repeated it substantially as before,
contriving, with small feminine tact, to suggest
the suspicions of Ruth, no longer openly
expressed.

When she had finished, Joachim Brewster,
brother of the deceased, was summoned, and
gave his evidence so closely, to the same
effect as that of Semantha, that the coroner
shrewdly inquired, as he finished:

“Did you and Mrs. Brewster talk over together
what you'd say to-day?”

“No, we didn't. It's because both stories
are true that they fay in so well together,”
said Joachim, a little anxiously.

“Was any body else in or about the house
that morning?” pursued the coroner.

“No, we don't keep any help. Peleg and
me carried on the farm, and Semanthy and
Ruth did the work in the house. There was
nobody else about.”

“Very well; you can sit down now. Call
Marston Brent.”

And Marston Brent, being summoned, deposed
to finding the dead body of Peleg
Brewster in the water called Blackbriar Pool,
and bringing it up the previous evening to
the house of Deacon Barstow, where it now
lay. He also spoke of searching for and
finding traces the next morning of the heavy
wagon and span of horses driven by the deceased,
and following them down the road to
a sudden turn, where the wagon lay broken,
with one horse still attached, and the other
lying dead not far off. The rifle and the little
girl's trunk had been thrown out by the
upsetting of the wagon, and lay in the road
beside it. The rifle had been discharged, and
he had found no trace of the child. So ended
this important evidence, and at its close the
coroner solemnly asked:

“What is your own opinion, Mr. Brent,
formed upon these circumstances, of the manner
in which the deceased came to his death?”

“My opinion is, sir, that the shot which
killed him was fired from behind, while the
wagon was passing through the thick clump
of trees shading Blackbriar Pool; that the explosion
frightened the horses, who swerved so
much as to throw Brewster from the wagon
into the water where I found him, and that
then they continued down the road as far as
the turn, where they upset.”

“And do you think it possible that a girl of
thirteen could have fired the shot which
killed this man?” continued the coroner, relying
more than he would have confessed
upon the opinions of the man before him.

“Certainly, it is possible,” replied Marston
Brent reluctantly.

“And if the wagon tipped enough to throw
out her father's body, it is not likely the child
would have remained in it?”

“No, especially sitting upon a trunk in the
back of the wagon.”

“And if she had been thrown into the
pool or upon its banks, you would have found
her or her body?”

“Certainly. I waded over nearly the
whole pool when I took the body of the deceased
from it, and I have been all about
there this morning.”

“Alone?”

“No; Paul Freeman was with me.”

“That will do, Mr. Brent. Summon Paul
Freeman.”

But Paul Freeman, however summoned,
was not to be found, and the latest intelligence
to be gathered concerning him was Miss
Rachel Barstow's statement, that about an hour
before the inquest she had seen him going upstairs
to his own bedroom. He was not there
now, however, nor were any of his belongings,
from which Miss Rachel inferred that he had
gone to carry them to Mr. Brent's house, whence
he was to start for the West early the next
morning.

A messenger was immediately dispatched in
search of the truant witness, while the examination
of those present went on; but in a
brief half hour he returned with the report
that Paul Freeman had not been seen at Mr.
Brent's house, or at any other upon the road
there, and the inquest was perforce brought
to a close without his testimony, which, indeed,
was only expected to corroborate that of
Marston Brent.

The consultation of the jury was long and
animated—a natural incredulity and horror
in every mind arguing against the verdict
plainly suggested by the evidence. Slowly
and reluctantly, however, man by man yielded
his wishes to his convictions, and when at last
the little audience was reädmitted, it was to
hear that, in the opinion of this jury, “the
deceased came to his death by a shot fired
from his own rifle by Ruth Brewster, his
daughter,” and a warrant for the apprehension
of the said Ruth was obtained upon the
spot, and placed in the hands of the County
Sheriff, then present.

“It's no more that child did it than I!” exclaimed
Aunt Rachel, bringing one fist down
into the palm of the other hand. “I say it,
and I'll stick to it.”

“I wish I could say so too; but I've heard
too much of the way she and Peleg would
go on together. They were run in the same
mould, and when their temper was up, I
wouldn't have stood in the way not for a good
deal. I had a hard time of it with that child,
the dear knows,” said Semantha, with the
corner of her shawl to her eyes.

“I don't believe any such story. I knew
Mary Brewster as well as I know my own
sister; and I'm not going to believe her child
could be brought to all that in two years'
time, even by the worst of management,” rejoined
Aunt Rachel significantly, and with no
answer except an oblique gleam from her
beryl-tinted eyes, Semantha left the house.