"Nor can you make it worth my while, you gents. I'll not
take money. I'm an honest hard-workin' man who can earn his own
livin', and you can't pay me to keep still, or to go away from
Shelby a day sooner than I want to. I was goin' away, but I gave
it up when they told me that things were beginnin' to look black
against Ol Ostrander;--that a woman had come into town who was a-
stirrin' up things generally about that old murder for which a
feller had already been 'lectrocuted, and knowin' somethin' myself
about that murder and Ol Ostrander, I--well, I stayed."
The quiet threat, the suggested possibility, the attack which
wraps itself in vague uncertainty, are ever the most effective. As
his raucous voice, dry with sinister purpose which no man could
shake, died out in an offensive drawl, Mr. Black edged a step
nearer the judge, before he sprang and caught the young fellow by
the coat-collar and gave him a very vigorous shake.
"See here!" he threatened. "Behave yourself and treat the judge
like a gentleman or--"
"Or what?" the bulldog mouth sneered. "See here yourself," he now
shouted, as the lawyer's hands unloosed and he stood panting; "I'm
not afeard o' you, sir, nor of the jedge, nor of the lady nuther.
I KNOWS somethin', I do; and when I gets ready to tell it, we'll
just see whose coat-collar they'll be handlin'. I came 'cause I
wanted to see the inside o' the house Ol Ostrander's father
doesn't think him good enough to live in.
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