The Squire's wig lay on one side, he had forgotten to adjust his eye, and he leaned forward, tremulous with interest.
"Well, then," said Walter, looking not at the court nor at Bronson nor at the prisoner, but furtively at Mr.Soden--"well, then, if I must"-- and Mr.Soden's awful face seemed to answer that he surely must--"well, then, I hope you won't send me to prison"-- this to Squire Hawkins, whose face reassured him--"but, oh! I don't see how I can!" But one look at Mr.Soden assured him that he could and that he must, and so, with an agony painful to the spectators, he told the story in driblets.

How, while yet in Lewisburg, he had been made a member of a gang of which Small was chief; how they concealed from him the names of all the band except six, of whom the Joneses and Small were three.
Here there was a scuffle at the door.

The court demanded silence.
"Dr.Small's trying to git out, plague take him," said Bud, who stood with his back planted against the door.

"I'd like the court to send and git his trunk afore he has a chance to burn up all the papers that's in it." "Constable, you will arrest Dr.Small, Peter Jones, and William Jones.
Send two deputies to bring Small's trunk into court," said Squire Underwood.
The prosecuting attorney was silent.
Walter then told of the robbery at Schroeder's, told where he and Small had whittled the fence while the Joneses entered the house, and confirmed Ralph's story by telling how they had seen Ralph in a fence-corner, and how they had met the basket-maker on the hill.
"_To_ be sure," said the old man, who had not ventured to hold up his head, after he was arrested, until Walter began his testimony.
Walter felt inclined to stop, but he could not do it, for there stood Mr.Soden, looking to him like a messenger from the skies, or the bottomless pit, sent to extort the last word from his guilty soul He felt that he was making a clean breast of it--at the risk of perdition, with the penitentiary thrown in, if he faltered.

And so he told the whole thing as though it had been the day of doom, and by the time he was through, Small's trunk was in court.
Here a new hubbub took place at the door.