Barry Holden

The very fall my sister Nancy Knapp

Set fire to the house

They were trying Dr. Duval

For the murder of Zora Clemens,

And I sat in the court two weeks

Listening to every witness.

It was clear he had got her in a family way;

And to let the child be born

Would not do.

Well, how about me with eight children,

And one coming, and the farm

Mortgaged to Thomas Rhodes?

And when I got home that night,

(After listening to the story of the buggy ride,

And the finding of Zora in the ditch,)

The first thing I saw, right there by the steps,

Where the boys had hacked for angle worms,

Was the hatchet!

And just as I entered there was my wife,

Standing before me, big with child.

She started the talk of the mortgaged farm,

And I killed her.