THE STEADFAST HEART
shooting. He isn’t very bright—not imbecile, you understand, but dull, deadened….”
“He admits the shooting, I am informed.”
“Of course. He pulled the trigger. But that alone doesn’t make him a murderer…. Let me tell you his story just as he told it to me—and you can judge for yourself…. When I come to think of it—from the way things appeared to him at that dreadful hour—he did a brave thing for a boy.”
“It takes a special kind of bravery to murder a sheriff,” said Crane, verging upon the ironical.
Trueman plunged into Angus’s story, and told it well. Crane listened calculatingly. When the pastor finished nobody spoke for a moment. Crane’s face was ruddier than usual, and his eyes, which had shifted to the window, were veiled…. They waited for him to speak.
“There are no witnesses to support this?”
“None. The boy’s mother, as you know, is dead.”
Wilkins was certain Crane found relief in this corroboration of his understanding of the facts. He was giving his best consideration to the narration; weighing it, estimating its possible effect on a jury of twelve good and true men selected from the vicinage of Rainbow.
“You see,” Trueman said eagerly, “the child is guiltless. He thought he was protecting his
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