A table stood in the middle of the main room, on which was an old mouldered chest with the earth clinging to it, and beside the chest were bones and shreds of clothing on the riven lid of the chest.

"You swear that the evidence you give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God!" exclaimed a small, chunky, Irish-looking person, presenting a book to be kissed by a scrawny, chinless, goose-necked lad, whom Hulda immediately recognized as Cyrus James.

"Shall I take him, Doctor Gibbons?" asked a fine-looking, easy-mannered man, of the magistrate.

"Yes, Mr. Clayton."

"Do you know the nature of an oath? What is it?"

"I'll be fried like a slapper on the devil's griddle ef I don't tell right," whined Cy James, zealously.

"No you won't; at least, not first. If you don't tell me the truth I'll have your two ears cut off on the pillory, and no slapper shall enter that hungry stomach of yours for a month. Goy!"

He looked at Cy James as if he had a mind to bite his nose off as a mere beginning.

"Now, Hollyday Hicks, you and Billy Hooper and the other constables take away this box, which smells too loud here, as soon as the witness has sworn to it. When did you last see this box, James?"

"About ten year ago, sir, when I had been bound to Patty Cannon four year, I reckon, I see Patty an' Joe Johnson an' Ebenezer, his brother, all toting this chist to the field an' a-buryin' of it."[8]

"What did you see them put in that chest?"

"A dead man - a nigger-trader. I can't tell whether his name was Bell or Miller; she killed two men nigh that time, an' I was so little that I've got 'em mixed."

"Did you see her kill this man?"

"No, sir, I wasn't home. I got home in time to see 'em packin' him in the box. I hearn Patty tell the boys how she killed him. Oh! she was proud of it, sir, becaze she didn't have no help in it."

Half a dozen heads of constables, some of whom Hulda knew, leaned forward together to hear the witness, while others removed the unsavory remains. Mr. Clayton continued:

"How did she say she killed him?"

"She said he come to Joe's tavern with a borreyed hoss from East New Market, where he told the people he was buyin' niggers, and would take fifteen thousand dollars wuth if he could git 'em. He was follered out, an' Ebenezer Johnson got in ahead of him. They told him the tavern was full, an' he would be better tuk care of at a good woman's little farm close by. They made him think, she said, that a gentleman with much money wasn't allus safe at the tavern. Aunt Patty got him supper. He sit at the table after it a-pickin' of his teeth. She got her pistol an' went out in her garden a-hoein' of her flowers. Once she come up on him at the window to shoot, but he turned quick, an' she says to him: 'Oh, sir, I only want to see if you didn't need somethin' more.' 'No, no,' says he; 'I've made a rale good supper.' 'I loves my flowers,' Aunt Patty says, 'an' likes to hoe 'em at sundown, so they can sleep nice an' soft.' 'Do you?' says he; 'I reckon you're a kind woman.' He turned around agin an' begin to look over his pocket-book. She hoed an' hoed, an' hummed a little tune. All at once she slipped up, an' I heerd her say, 'Boys, I give it to him good, right in the back of the head, an' he fell on to the table, an' the water he had been drinkin' was red as currant wine.'"