and not knowing what they was about. And the whole house the same. I
never seen people look so helpless and tangled up, and I hain't ever seen
eyes bug out and gaze without a blink the way theirn did. Tom says,
perfectly ca'm:

"Your honor, may I speak?"

"For God's sake, yes--go on!" says the judge, so astonished and mixed up
he didn't know what he was about hardly.

Then Tom he stood there and waited a second or two--that was for to work
up an "effect," as he calls it--then he started in just as ca'm as ever,
and says:

"For about two weeks now there's been a little bill sticking on the front
of this courthouse offering two thousand dollars reward for a couple of
big di'monds--stole at St. Louis. Them di'monds is worth twelve thousand
dollars. But never mind about that till I get to it. Now about this
murder. I will tell you all about it--how it happened--who done it--every
DEtail."

You could see everybody nestle now, and begin to listen for all they was
worth.

"This man here, Brace Dunlap, that's been sniveling so about his dead
brother that YOU know he never cared a straw for, wanted to marry that
young girl there, and she wouldn't have him. So he told Uncle Silas he
would make him sorry. Uncle Silas knowed how powerful he was, and how
little chance he had against such a man, and he was scared and worried,
and done everything he could think of to smooth him over and get him to