(MRS PETERS bends closer.)

MRS PETERS:  It’s the bird.

MRS HALE:  (jumping up) But, Mrs Peters—­look at it!  It’s neck!  Look at its neck!

It’s all—­other side to.

MRS PETERS:  Somebody—­wrung—­its—­neck.

(Their eyes meet.  A look of growing comprehension, of horror.  Steps are heard outside.  MRS HALE slips box under quilt pieces, and sinks into her chair.  Enter SHERIFF and COUNTY ATTORNEY.  MRS PETERS rises.)

COUNTY ATTORNEY:  (as one turning from serious things to little pleasantries) Well ladies, have you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot it?

MRS PETERS:  We think she was going to—­knot it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY:  Well, that’s interesting, I’m sure. (seeing the birdcage) Has the bird flown?

MRS HALE:  (putting more quilt pieces over the box) We think the—­cat got it.

COUNTY ATTORNEY:  (preoccupied) Is there a cat?

(MRS HALE glances in a quick covert way at MRS PETERS.)

MRS PETERS:  Well, not now.  They’re superstitious, you know.  They leave.

COUNTY ATTORNEY:  (to SHERIFF PETERS, continuing an interrupted conversation) No sign at all of anyone having come from the outside.  Their own rope.  Now let’s go up again and go over it piece by piece. (they start upstairs) It would have to have been someone who knew just the—­

(MRS PETERS sits down.  The two women sit there not looking at one another, but as if peering into something and at the same time holding back.  When they talk now it is in the manner of feeling their way over strange ground, as if afraid of what they are saying, but as if they can not help saying it.)

MRS HALE:  She liked the bird.  She was going to bury it in that pretty box.

MRS PETERS:  (in a whisper) When I was a girl—­my kitten—­there was a boy took a hatchet, and before my eyes—­and before I could get there—­(covers her face an instant) If they hadn’t held me back I would have—­(catches herself, looks upstairs where steps are heard, falters weakly)—­hurt him.

MRS HALE:  (with a slow look around her) I wonder how it would seem never to have had any children around, (pause) No, Wright wouldn’t like the bird—­a thing that sang.  She used to sing.  He killed that, too.

MRS PETERS:  (moving uneasily) We don’t know who killed the bird.

MRS HALE:  I knew John Wright.

MRS PETERS:  It was an awful thing was done in this house that night, Mrs Hale.  Killing a man while he slept, slipping a rope around his neck that choked the life out of him.

MRS HALE:  His neck.  Choked the life out of him.

(Her hand goes out and rests on the bird-cage.)

MRS PETERS:  (with rising voice) We don’t know who killed him.  We don’t know.