be good to him: he even took his no-account brother Jubiter on the farm
and give him wages and stinted his own family to pay them; and Jubiter
done everything his brother could contrive to insult Uncle Silas, and
fret and worry him, and try to drive Uncle Silas into doing him a hurt,
so as to injure Uncle Silas with the people. And it done it. Everybody
turned against him and said the meanest kind of things about him, and it
graduly broke his heart--yes, and he was so worried and distressed that
often he warn't hardly in his right mind.

"Well, on that Saturday that we've had so much trouble about, two of
these witnesses here, Lem Beebe and Jim Lane, come along by where Uncle
Silas and Jubiter Dunlap was at work--and that much of what they've said
is true, the rest is lies. They didn't hear Uncle Silas say he would kill
Jubiter; they didn't hear no blow struck; they didn't see no dead man,
and they didn't see Uncle Silas hide anything in the bushes. Look at them
now--how they set there, wishing they hadn't been so handy with their
tongues; anyway, they'll wish it before I get done.

"That same Saturday evening Bill and Jack Withers DID see one man lugging
off another one. That much of what they said is true, and the rest is
lies. First off they thought it was a nigger stealing Uncle Silas's
corn--you notice it makes them look silly, now, to find out somebody
overheard them say that. That's because they found out by and by who it
was that was doing the lugging, and THEY know best why they swore here
that they took it for Uncle Silas by the gait--which it WASN'T, and they
knowed it when they swore to that lie.

"A man out in the moonlight DID see a murdered person put under ground in
the tobacker field--but it wasn't Uncle Silas that done the burying. He
was in his bed at that very time.