He wondered why the jury,--men whom he knew and had known for years, most of them,--looked at one another so queerly when he declared that he had seen Aleck ride home.

The coroner also had given him a queer look, but he had not made any comment.
Aleck, too, had turned his head and stared at Lite in a way which Lite preferred to think he had not understood.
Beyond that one statement which had produced such a curious effect, Lite did not have anything to say that shed the faintest light upon the matter.

He told where he had been, and that he had discovered the body just before Jean arrived, and that he had immediately started with her to town.

The coroner did not cross-question him.

Counting from four o'clock, which Jim had already named as the time of their separation, Lite would have had just about time to do the things he testified to doing.