"And wasn't it?"

"Judge Ostrander, I never thought differently fill after the
trial--till after the earth closed over my poor husband's remains.
That was why I could say nothing in his defence--why I did not
believe him when he declared that he had left his stick behind him
when he ran up the bluff after Reuther. The tree he pointed out as
the one against which he had stood it, was far behind the place
where I saw this advancing shadow. Even the oath he made to me of
his innocence at the last interview we held in prison did not
impress me at the time as truthful. But later, when it was all
over, when the disgrace of his death and the necessity of seeking
a home elsewhere drove me into selling the tavern and all its
effects, I found something which changed my mind in this regard,
and made me confident that I had done my husband a great
injustice."

"You found? What do you mean by that? What could you have found?"

"His peaked cap lying in a corner of the garret. He had not worn
it that day."

The judge stared. She repeated her statement, and with more
emphasis:

"He had not worn it that day; for when he came back to be hustled
off again by the crowd, he was without hat of any kind, and he
never returned again to his home--you know that, judge. I had seen
the shadow of some other man approaching Dark Hollow. WHOSE, I AM