Jinnie Explains The Death Chair to Bobbie

As Mrs. Grandoken entered slowly, Jinnie turned to her.

"You didn't see him?" she said in a tone half exclamation, half question.

"No," responded Peg, wearily, sitting down. "I waited 'most two hours for the lawyer, an' when he come, I begged harder'n anything, but it didn't do no good. He says I can't see my man for a long time. I guess they're tryin' to make him confess he killed Maudlin."

Jinnie's hand clutched frantically at the other's arm. Both women had forgotten the presence of the blind child.

"He wouldn't do that," cried Jinnie, panic-stricken. "A man can't own up to doing a thing he didn't do."

"Course not," whispered Bobbie, in an awed whisper, and the girl sat down, drawing him to her lap. She could no longer guard her tongue nor hide her feelings. She took the afternoon paper from Mrs. Grandoken's hand.

"Read about it aloud," implored the woman.

"It says," began Jinnie, "Mr. King's dying."

The paper fluttered from her hand, and she sat like a small graven image. To see those words so cruelly set in black and white, staring at her with frightful truth, harrowed the very soul of her. A sobbing outburst from Bobbie mingled with the soft chug, chug of the engine outside on the track. Happy Pete, too, felt the tragedy in the air. He wriggled nearer his young mistress and rested his pointed nose on one of her knees, while his twinkling yellow eyes demanded, in their eloquent way, to know the cause of his loved ones' sorrow.