A Jury of Her Peers

After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman

After she had the robes tucked around her she took another look at the woman who sat beside her on the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year before at the county fair and the thing she remembered about her was that she did not seem like a sheriff's wife. She was small and thin and didn't have a strong voice. Mrs. German, sheriffs wife before German went out and Peters came in had a voice that somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every word. But if Mrs. Peters didn't look like a sheriffs wife Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a dot the kind of man who could get himself elected sheriff a heavy man with a big voice, who was particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make it plain that he knew the difference between criminals and non criminals. And right there it came into Mrs. Hales mind with a stab, that this man who was so pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the Wrights now as a sheriff.

Even after she had her foot on the door-step her hand on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of feeling she could not cross that threshold. And the reason it seemed she couldn't cross it now was simply because she hand crossed it before. Time and time again it had been in her mind I ought to go over and see Minnie Foster she still thought of her as Minnie Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs. Wright. And then there was always something to do and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now she could come.