both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort
her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto
Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a
few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told
come filing into that room, one at a time, looking
sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
getting there because she stopped to put on her
bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black
Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent
her from Chicago.

When they found out Hank had come home with
licker in him and done it himself, they was all
excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands
which sets moaning in a chair. And they all asts
me questions as to what I seen him do, which if
they hadn't I wouldn't have told em the lies I did.
But they egged me on to it.

Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it
in the blacksmith shop?"

I nodded.

"But how did he get in?" sings out another
woman. "The door was locked on the outside with
a padlock jest now when I come by. He couldn't
of killed himself in there and locked the door on
the outside."