he wasn't inside this circle. But also a reminder that Alvin thought of him and wanted to include him.
"So Eleanor gets Ramona and sets her down inside that hex you made for her in the shop, Alvin, the one that makes liars get so nervous, only I don't know as how it was really needed. Eleanor says to her, Who's the father of Amy's baby, and Ramona says, How should I know? only it's a plain lie, and finally when Eleanor won't let up, Ramona says, Last time I told the truth it only caused Alvin Maker to have to run away cause of Amy's lies, but she swore it was true, she swore it and so I believed her but now she's saying it was Alvin got her pregnant and I know that's not true cause she got into the freak show tent with - "
Alvin held up his hand. "Matt Thatcher?"
"Of course," said Measure. "Why we didn't just castrate him along with the pigs I don't know."
"She saw them or is it hearsay?" asked Verily.
"Saw them and stood guard where they went under the tent and heard Amy cry out once and heard Matt panting and then it was done and she asked Amy what it was like and Amy looked positively stricken and says to her, It's awful and it hurts. Ramona's got no doubt Amy was a virgin up till then, so all the other stories is lies."
"She's not competent to testify about Amy's virginity," said Verily, "but she'd still be a help. It would take care of the pregnancy and make it plain that Amy is something of a liar. Reasonable doubt. How long will it take to get her down here?"
"She's here," said Peggy. "I got her to the roadhouse and Horace Guester's feeding her."
"I want to talk to her tonight," said Verily. "This is good. This is something. And until now, we had nothing."
"They have nothing," said Peggy. "And yet..."
"And yet they'd convict me if they voted right now, wouldn't they?" Alvin asked.
Peggy nodded. "I thought they knew you better."
"This is all so extraneous to Makepeace's assertions," said Verily. "None of this would have been permitted in an English court."
"Next time somebody tries to get me arrested for larceny and a crazy girl claims to be pregnant by me, I'll arrange to have it tried in London," said Alvin, grinning.
"Good idea," said Verily. "Besides, we have a much higher grade of crazy girls in England."
"I'm going to testify," said Peggy.
"I don't think so," said Alvin.
"You aren't a witness of anything," said Verily.
"You saw how the rules go in this court," said Peggy. "You can work me in."
"It won't help," said Verily. "They'll chalk it up to your being in love with Alvin."
Alvin sighed and lay back on his cot.
"No they won't," said Peggy. "They know me."
"They know Alvin, too," said Verily.
"Don't mean to contradict you, sir," said Arthur Stuart, "but everybody knows Miss Larner here is a torch, and everybody knows that before she tells a lie, you can boil an egg in a pan of snow."
"If I testify, he won't be convicted," said Peggy.
"No," said Alvin. "They'll drag you through the mud. Webster doesn't care about convicting me, you know that. He only wants to destroy me and everybody near me, because that's what the people who hired him want."
"We don't even know who they are," said Verily.
"I don't know their names, but I know who they are and what they want. To you it looks as though Amy's testimony is a sidetrack, but it's Amy's testimony they wanted. And if they could get testimony about me and Peggy in the smithy on the night the plow was made - "
"I'm not afraid of their calumnies," said Peggy.
"It ain't calumnies I'm talking about, it's the plain truth," said Alvin. "I was naked, we was alone in the smithy. Can't help what conclusions folks draw from that, and so I won't have you getting on the stand and all that story coming out in the papers in Carthage and Dekane and heaven knows where else. We'll do it another way."
"Ramona will be a help," said Verily.
"Not Ramona either," said Alvin. "It does no good to have one friend betray another for my sake."
The others were flabbergasted.
"You got to be joking!" cried Measure. "After I brought her all the way here? And she wants to testify."
"I'm sure she does," said Alvin. "But after the papers are through hacking at Amy, how will Ramona feel