The coroner rose to his feet in a quick start, as if he intended to leap over the table. He pointed his finger at Joe, shaking his somber beard.
"What did Isom Chase catch you at when he came into that kitchen?" he asked accusingly.
"He saw me standing there, just about to blow out the light and go to bed," said Joe.
"What did you and Isom quarrel about last night?"
Joe did not reply at once. He seemed debating with himself over the advisability of answering at all. Then he raised his slow eyes to the coroner's face.
"Very well," said the coroner shortly, resuming his seat. "You may tell the jury how Isom Chase was shot."
Joe described Isom's leap for the gun, the struggle he had with him to restrain him, the catching of the lock in the fork as Isom tugged at the barrel, the shot, and Isom's death.
When he finished, the coroner bent over his note-book again, as if little interested and less impressed. Silence fell over the room. Then the coroner spoke, his head still bent over the book, not even turning his face toward the witness, his voice soft and low.
"You were alone with Isom in the kitchen when this happened?"
A flash of heat ran over Ollie's body. After it came a sweeping wave of cold. The room whirled; the world stood on edge. Her hour had struck; the last moment of her troubled security was speeding away. What would Joe answer to that?
Ollie breathed again; her heart's constriction relaxed.
A little murmur, as of people drawing together with whispers; a little soft scuffing of cautiously shifted feet on the carpet, followed the question. Ollie shrank back, as if wincing from pain.
"Mrs. Chase was upstairs in her room," answered Joe.
The weight of a thousand centuries lifted from Ollie's body. Her vision cleared. Her breath came back in measured flow to her lips, moist and refreshing.
He had not told. He was standing between her and the sharp tongues of those waiting people, already licking hungrily in their awakened suspicion, ready to sear her fair name like flames. But there was no gratitude in her heart that moment, no quick lifting of thankfulness nor understanding of the great peril which Joe had assumed for her. There was only relief, blessed, easing, cool relief. He had not told.