The Digital Yoknapatawpha Project

As a group, the townspeople appear in the story several times in the character of witness to or even jury passing verdict on the story's characters and events. For example, as the narrator puts it, "we in Jefferson" often listened to Old Anse's boasting with distaste for him as an outsider (3), just as later "we were watching Judge Dunkenfield" to see what he would decide about Old Anse's will (11).

These servants of Old Anse Holland witness much of the tension between their master and his sons. On the night Young Anse leaves home for good, the scene was “of such violence that the Negro servants all fled the house and scattered for the night” (5).

Old Anse is known to be "a ruthless man" in part because of the "tales told about him by both white and negro tenants" (3). These "tenants" are share-croppers who farm parcels of land on the Mardis-Holland property for a portion of the money when the crop is sold.

This man - referred to by Gavin Stevens only as "a nigger" - reports to Stevens that a "big car was parked in Virginius Holland’s barn the night before Judge Dukinfield was killed" (29).

This man - referred to only as "a Negro" - tells the authorities about seeing Old Anse "digging up the graves in the cedar grove where five generations of his wife’s people rested" (9).