hang, as surely as I’m sitting here.
“I can’t say,” she whispered, huddling back against the wall.
Wilson tried to persuade her to confide in us, but she would say nothing further. At last he fairly shouted at her, “Mrs. Silver, without your testimony these people cannot be convicted!”
At that she smiled and shook her head again. I wondered if she really understood what her refusal would cost her.
We left the cell then, for it was clear that nothing more could be got out of badgering the poor creature. She had made up her mind to keep silent. As we descended the stairs, I murmured to Wilson, “She should not be hanged for this crime, sir! It was self-defense.”
“I know it,” he said. “I thought it must have been, but as she could not testify in court, we could not present that defense to the jury. It is not the killing of Charlie Silver that will hang her, anyhow.”
“No, it isn’t. It is the cutting up of the body that has outraged the community, and she will not explain that point away. It was panic, I suppose. She wanted to hide the evidence of her crime, for she does not understand legal shadings like ‘self-defense’ or ‘manslaughter.’ Poor ignorant girl! What will you do now?”
Thomas Wilson sighed. “I will write to Governor Swain yet again. I must tell you, though, that he is reluctant to intercede. I received a letter from him only last week, and he shows no inclination to mercy. As for the persons who helped Mrs. Silver escape, the governor wants them hanged as well.”
“But she should not have been convicted!”
“She was, though. And the state says that verdicts are to be honored, just or unjust. I have shared the governor’s letter with the prisoner’s father, Isaiah Stewart. I hope it will serve as a warning to him, lest he should get the whole family hanged instead of only the daughter.”
“Poor Mr. Stewart. His daughter is wrongly convicted, and he is powerless to save her. Can you wonder that he is driven to desperate measures?”
“I have no sympathy to spare for the relatives,” said Thomas Wilson. “It is their meddling that will get her hanged. They should have trusted in the law the moment that Charlie Silver died, instead of now, when it is all but too late.” He shook his head. “Well, I will do what I can. I will advise the governor of Mrs. Silver’s confession. I must impress upon him that the act was self-defense. Perhaps he will not hang her when he knows the facts of the case. But the escape—that was ill-judged. She is indeed an unfortunate woman.”
“You must save her, Wilson.”
“Well, I will try. You would oblige me by making several fair copies of Mrs. Silver’s confession. We shall need them to accompany the petitions we must circulate around the county. The governor will want reassurance that he is making a popular decision.”
“I will write them out tonight,” I said.
“Good. Time is short. I will write to Woodfin in Asheville myself. I think when he hears of this new evidence, he will assist us as well.”
Downstairs we said our farewells to Sheriff Boone. “I have witnessed her confession,” I told him. “And it is a sad tale indeed. I hope that this document will spare you the terrible duty of hanging her.”
“I hope so, too,” he said. “With all my heart. Though I reckon it would disappoint half the county to be deprived of the spectacle.”
“Not I,” I said. “If the dreadful day comes, I hope I am far away from the site of the execution, and I shall wish to hear nothing whatever about it then or later.”
As I started to cross the threshold into the open air, John Boone called me back. “Mr. Gaither,” he said, “you do realize, don’t you, that as clerk of Superior Court you are the highest-ranking officer of the court in the county?”
“I suppose so,” I said. “Why do you mention it?”
The old sheriff put his hand on my shoulder. “I wondered if you knew that you are the state’s witness to the hanging.”
Late that night, after most of the household had gone to bed, I sat before the fire in the great hall at Belvidere, copying out the confession that I had taken down. I heard the rustle of skirts and the soft patter of slippers on the oak floor. I had hoped that it was Elizabeth, come to keep me company after putting young