IV
IT was the first Monday of July, and the grand inquisitors of the county of McDowell were in laborious session. It was hot in Welch,—so hot that the sheriff had purchased a linen coat and departed for Atlantic City on a ten-dollar excursion, leaving the deputy, Salathiel Jenkins, to swelter with the grand jury. So hot that J. E. B. Huron, prosecuting attorney by selection of the Commonwealth, resorted to expressions not quite profane but nipping close to the border. So hot that the foreman from Charity Fork made continual odious reference to that historic locality over which Lazarus passed in the bosom of Abraham.
The grand jury was a body mightily out of harmony with its inquisitorial affairs, especially on this sweltering Monday when the mercury
