They told him the tavern was
full, an' he would be better tuk care of at a good woman's little farm
close by. They made him think, she said, that a gentleman with much
money wasn't allus safe at the tavern. Aunt Patty got him supper. He sit
at the table after it a-pickin' of his teeth. She got her pistol an'
went out in her garden a-hoein' of her flowers. Once she come up on him
at the window to shoot, but he turned quick, an' she says to him: 'Oh,
sir, I only want to see if you didn't need somethin' more.' 'No, no,'
says he; 'I've made a rale good supper.' 'I loves my flowers,' Aunt
Patty says, 'an' likes to hoe 'em at sundown, so they can sleep nice an'
soft.' 'Do you?' says he; 'I reckon you're a kind woman.' He turned
around agin an' begin to look over his pocket-book. She hoed an' hoed,
an' hummed a little tune. All at once she slipped up, an' I heerd her
say, 'Boys, I give it to him good, right in the back of the head, an' he
fell on to the table, an' the water he had been drinkin' was red as
currant wine.'"
"James Moore, I'll swear you next," the magistrate said to the new
tenant of the farm; and this man proceeded to testify concerning the
finding of the chest as he was ploughing in a wet spot where he had
removed some brush.
Cy James, being recalled, gave testimony as to other buried bodies,
chiefly of children slaughtered in wantonness or jealousy, or to avoid
pursuit.
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