A draft of wind blew
into the room under the kitchen door chilling his thin shanks so that he
drew his bare feet, one after the other, up behind the protective walls of
his nightgown.
"On the night of my mother's death," ran the statement, "I sat in the
kitchen of our house eating my supper when my father came in and began
shouting and talking loudly, disturbing my mother who was asleep. I put my
hand at his throat and squeezed until I thought he was dead, and carried
him around the house and threw him into the road. Then I ran to the house
of Mary Underwood, who was once my schoolteacher, and told her what I had
done. She took me home, awoke John Telfer, and then went to look for the
body of my father, who was not dead after all. John McPherson knows this
is true, if he can be made to tell the truth."
Tom Comstock shouted to his wife, a small nervous woman with red cheeks,
who set up type in the shop, did her own housework, and gathered most of
the news and advertising for _The Argus_.
"Ain't that a slasher?" he asked, handing her the statement Sam had
written.
"Well, it ought to stop the mean things they are saying about Mary
Underwood," she snapped. Then, taking the glasses from her nose, and
looking at Tom, who, while he did not find time to give her much help with
_The Argus_, was the best checker player in Caxton and had once been to a
state tournament of experts in that sport, she added, "Poor Jane
McPherson, to have had a son like Sam and no better father for him than
that liar Windy.
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