It was, for me, a final leave-taking. All partings after this would be footnotes in my life. When Nelson lifted my trunks into the carriage, I felt the ropes binding me to home tearing. There was a finality about it that would render any other partings as trivial. These feelings hung heavy on me, and I did not know why. I think Pa felt it, too. He stood there looking mournful. And well he should. The panel had convened by eight o'clock and was finished at nine, after which Pa came home and told us. Caroline Turner was free. She was deemed not insane, and somehow she had convinced the rest of the men that she'd been acting in self-defense. Pa wouldn't discuss the matter. He'd come home, eaten his breakfast, and now he looked as if Brer Fox had him pinned in a briar patch. How much of it was because I was leaving? He was, in a way, losing his third daughter. The little ones crowded around the carriage and had to be herded out of the way by Betsy and Ann. "Good-bye, Mary, good-bye," they chanted, as if I were off to Springfield, Illinois, and not a mile and a half away.
