boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes--and before I could get
there--(_covers her face an instant_) If they hadn't held me back I
would have--(_catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard,
falters weakly_)--hurt him.

MRS HALE: (_with a slow look around her_) I wonder how it would seem
never to have had any children around, (_pause_) No, Wright wouldn't
like the bird--a thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that, too.

MRS PETERS: (_moving uneasily_) We don't know who killed the bird.

MRS HALE: I knew John Wright.

MRS PETERS: It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs
Hale. Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that
choked the life out of him.

MRS HALE: His neck. Choked the life out of him.

(_Her hand goes out and rests on the bird-cage_.)

MRS PETERS: (_with rising voice_) We don't know who killed him. We don't
_know_.

MRS HALE: (_her own feeling not interrupted_) If there'd been years and
years of nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it would be awful--still,
after the bird was still.

MRS PETERS: (_something within her speaking_) I know what stillness is.
When we homesteaded in Dakota, and my first baby died--after he was two