Well, that beat me. I couldn't understand it. And Benny and her
mother--oh, they looked sick, they was so troubled. They shoved their
veils to one side and tried to get his eye, but it warn't any use, and I
couldn't get his eye either. So the mud-turtle he tackled the witness,
but it didn't amount to nothing; and he made a mess of it.

Then they called up Jim Lane, and he told the very same story over again,
exact. Tom never listened to this one at all, but set there thinking and
thinking, miles and miles away. So the mud-turtle went in alone again and
come out just as flat as he done before. The lawyer for the prostitution
looked very comfortable, but the judge looked disgusted. You see, Tom was
just the same as a regular lawyer, nearly, because it was Arkansaw law
for a prisoner to choose anybody he wanted to help his lawyer, and Tom
had had Uncle Silas shove him into the case, and now he was botching it
and you could see the judge didn't like it much. All that the mud-turtle
got out of Lem and Jim was this: he asked them:

"Why didn't you go and tell what you saw?"

"We was afraid we would get mixed up in it ourselves. And we was just
starting down the river a-hunting for all the week besides; but as soon
as we come back we found out they'd been searching for the body, so then
we went and told Brace Dunlap all about it."

"When was that?"

"Saturday night, September 9th."

The judge he spoke up and says: