Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/35

 fired at your side door and you not hear it?" the coroner asked, with that sudden sharpness he had at times.

"I am compelled to believe that it did occur;" and there was to more than one onlooker an air of defiance in the answer.

"In advance of this, would you believe it possible?" he demanded.

She looked at him as if weighing the question and its purpose, and then said deliberately:

"No."

The answer manifestly accorded with the sense of the spectators, among whom there were sundry exchanges of glances not all friendly to the witness. But the coroner was speaking again:

"Mrs. Parlin, what do you know of the parentage of the late Theodore Wing?"

Every head was bent towards the witness to catch the answer to what the veriest dullard suspected was the most important question thus far asked. The witness grew pale—paler than she had been at any time, and there came into her bearing a touch of defiance rather felt than seen. She was appar