THE STEADFAST HEART
basement windows—or better, the windows of a vacant house. Altogether, it was the face of a child whose life had been monotony, dullness, in whom apathy had erected itself as a protective armor against cruelty and hardship. Here was a boy who had developed physically because the labor of a family was exacted from him alone, but whose mental development had been arrested, made static because no stimulus had ever been given to it…. It was a face in the balance; a turn of the hand might move it upward or downward. The boy was ten years old. At eleven sinister marks might appear; at twenty the whole aspect might become that of a slug-witted criminal of the lowest order.
Trueman was concerned and curious, moved by his concern to question.
“Why aren’t you sorry your mother is dead?”
“I don’t know,” Angus answered. Then, “It don’t make no difference—not if anybody is dead.” You see he was struggling to express himself, to put into thought and word some dim, struggling idea, some shadow of an idea.
“Angus,” said Trueman, taking another tack, “this is a serious business, an awful business. You are locked in a jail. You understand that. Because you are accused of killing a man—the sheriff of this county…. Do you know what they’ll do with you?”
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