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Ball said he did. He went on to detail his investigation of Cleveland, including his interviews with Maria Halpin’s lawyer, Milo Whitney, and with her former employers at the Flint & Kent department store. Ball said a committee of thirty Buffalo clergyman had authorized him to look into Cleveland’s life. He said he never desired publicity or notoriety.

Moot came around to the Vine Alley excursion in search of Mrs. McLean. “Did you go anywhere else [on Vine Alley] except to see Mrs. McLean?”

“I am not certain whether we did or not.”

Ball apologized for dishonoring the late Oscar Folsom and the Beaver Island Club. In Ball’s words, he was “off about the whole affair generally.” But he also pointed out that a correction under his name had been published in the Buffalo Commercial Advertiser back in 1884, just three days after he realized he had committed a grave blunder.

Moot then asked Ball to give the jurors his version of that unpleasant business in Owensville.

“I was preaching to a crowded congregation in the evening and there was someone who screeched during the service.” He said at first he thought the woman was having a “fit.”

“Then I went on and heard the screech again and I thought someone was interrupting the service. I said in substance that I hoped no one would disturb the meeting and closed the service.” Right after, Ball said, he was informed by the other worshippers that what he had assumed to be screeching had actually been an “outburst of religious fervor.”

“I had never heard of such manifestations of religious fervor before,” he said, and it was his idea to go to Mrs. Montgomery’s house to ask for forgiveness. He did get down on his knees to pray, but he denied that he had ever been threatened with a whipping. “The meeting was very pleasant. We joined in religious services and that was all.”

Moot was done. Now John Milburn rose to commence his re-direct. He tore into Ball for failing to get Cleveland’s side of the story before going public with the allegations regarding his relationship with Maria Halpin and the birth of his illegitimate son.

“You have sworn that you went to Flint & Kent. Did you go to Wilson S. Bissell or George Sicord, longtime friends of Mr. Cleveland, for confirmation?”

“I did not go to them.”

“Who brought up these matters in reference to Mr. Cleveland’s character at the minister’s meeting?”

“I can’t say.”

“Were you not the prime mover?”

“No.” Ball’s baritone voice shook. Was it defiance—or equivocation? “I don’t know as I was.”

With that, his testimony was over.

Milburn called Dr. Alexander Bull to the stand. The sixty-three-year-old physician wore rimless glasses. He had long sideburns connected to a bushy white mustache that left his chin clean-shaven. Bull was one of Buffalo’s finest healers. Once he had treated the son of a tribal chief for a life-threatening abscess, and when, in a matter of days, it had disappeared, the grateful chief adopted Bull into the tribe.

Dr. Bull said he knew George Ball only slightly. He knew Grover Cleveland much better—they had been friends for more than twenty years. He recalled the day in 1884 when Reverend Ball came into his office accompanied by Dr. George Lewis. Milburn asked for his recollection of the conversation the three men had regarding the death of Oscar Folsom.

“I don’t know much about it, and I don’t think I gave Dr. Ball any information on the subject.”

Moot shot up from his chair for re-direct. He could not shake the physician’s story. Bull said he could not recall the subject of Oscar Folsom’s death ever coming up. And he said that whatever he may have told Ball about Folsom or Maria Halpin was a “street story,” meaning just gossip, not to be taken as factual.

Dr. Lewis was the next witness.

“Did you have a conversation with Dr. Ball in 1884 in regard to the private character of Grover Cleveland?” asked Milburn.

“I really have no recollection of it,” Lewis said. He took the jury back to the day when Mrs. Baker brought her neighbor Maria Halpin into his office. This occurred just a few days after