been done--though the excitement wuz more rampant that I ever knew it to
be, and every single man in the community wuz out bloodthirsty for his
death, and every party a-carry-in' a rope to hang him, and every woman
a-lookin' out eager to see him hung, and all on 'em a-cursin' him, and
a-weepin' over what he had done--

Durin' all this time, not one word did I hear uttered agin the cause of
his crime, agin the man who sold him what made him a murderer, and
worse, or the man that supplied the saloon with this damnable liquid.

No, not a single word did I hear from a Jonesvillian, male or female.
And not one word from my pardner, though his excitement wuz so extreme
that that night, jest about dusk, he rushed out thinkin' that he had got
the murderer, and throwed the rope round Deacon Sypher, who had come
over to borrow an auger. And once in a similer way he ketched Old
Bobbet, his excitement and zeal wuz so rampant and intense.

[Illustration: He rushed out and throwed the rope around Deacon Sypher.]

Them old men wuz mad as hens, and cause enough they had, though they
forgive him when they see what a state he wuz in, and they jest about as
bad themselves.

But not a word from them, nor from any one did I hear durin' the hull
time the excitement rained--and oh! how it did rain--about the cause of
the crime.

Not one man waded in and dived down into the deep undercurrent of
causes, that strange deep that underlays all human actions.