Page:The traitor; a story of the fall of the invisible empire (IA traitorstoryoffa00dixo).pdf/335

 "Nasah! dat I didn't!"

"Do you know that if you swear a lie"

"I ain't swar no lie!" Isaac interrupted with religious fervour. "I'se de Lord's Sanctified One, sah. I ain't done no sin since I got sanctification. Yassah, praise God!"

"Don't you know," repeated the lawyer, "that if you swear to a lie on that witness stand you can be sent to the penitentiary for perjury?"

"I knows dey ain't gwine sen' me dar—I knows dat," Isaac said with a grin, and his Negro acquaintances in the jury box laughed.

The lawyer changed his line of questions.

"You say you saw John Graham strike the death-blow?"

"Yassah, I see 'im wid dese very eyes."

"Were you close enough to hear what was said?"

"Yassah, I wuz right dar by de open winder."

"What did he say?"

"Des ez he raise de knife he say, "I got you now, you d Black Radical 'Publican!"

"You swear that you heard him say that he killed the Judge because he was a Republican?"

"Yassah! dat's what de Ku Kluxes kill 'em all fur, sah!"

Larkin shuffled uneasily, bent again in conference with Steve who rose immediately and asked for an adjournment of two hours.