Unnamed Jefferson Townspeople

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). Elsewhere they note what's going on around the Square, although they seem to have been unobservant where the other outsider in the story, the hired hitman, is concerned: "Perhaps a dozen men saw him; perhaps twice that many did not look at him at all" (32).