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Meantime a lively discussion was carried on in the house.

"We've got to do something for Tom, I suppose," said Mrs. Grayson, after the question of his blameworthiness was exhausted. "He's your nephew, and we can't get around that. Goodness knows he's given us trouble enough, and expense enough, already." It was a favorite illusion with the Graysons that they had spent money on Tom, though he had earned all he had received.

"Yes," said Grayson reluctantly; "it'll be expected of us, Charlotte, to stand by him. He's got no father, you know. And I suppose George Lockwood was aggravating enough."

"The Lord knows I'm sorry for Tom; he was always good to Janet." This reminded Mrs. Grayson of her daughter, and she went to the open door of the dining-room and called, "Janet! O Janet! It's curious how she stands by Tom. She's off in the sulks, and won't answer a word I say. I suppose you'll have to go his bail," she said with apprehension.

"No, it's not bailable. They don't bail prisoners charged with capital offenses."

"That's a good thing, anyhow. I hate to have you go security."

"I suppose Martha'll be able to pay the lawyers," said Thomas Grayson. "She won't expect us to do any more for Tom. It's bad enough to have to stand the disgrace of it."

"Janet! Janet! O Janet!" called Mrs. Grayson anxiously. "I declare, I'm uneasy about that child; it's nearly half an hour since she went out. I wish you'd go and have a look for her."

But at that moment Janet rushed in breathless through the kitchen.

"O Pa! I've been over to the jail to see Tom."

"You've been to the jail!" said Grayson, recoiling in his heart from such an experience for Janet.

"Yes, an' they've put Barbara and Aunt Martha in there too, along with Tom." She was bursting with indignation.

"Thomas," said Mrs. Grayson, as she gathered up the hitherto neglected breakfast plates, "Martha and Barbara have come from home this morning."

"I suppose so," said Grayson, looking out of the window.

"Now it's not going to do for us to let them go without coming here to breakfast," said the wife. "People will say we're hardhearted; and when they once get to talking there's no knowing what they won't say. They might blame us about Tom, though the Lord knows we did our best for him."

"Will you go and ask Martha and Barbara to come over?" said Grayson, with a sneaking desire to escape the disagreeable duty.

"I can't bear to," said his wife. "I hate to go to the jail and see Tom there. Besides, if they're coming I must make some coffee."

Grayson stood still and looked out of the window.

"Will they let them come if you ask 'em?" inquired Janet.

"Let who come?" said her father abstractedly.

"Aunt Martha and Barbara and Tom."

"Of course they'll not keep your Aunt Martha nor Barbara. They haven't killed anybody."

"Neither has Tom. He told me to tell you he hadn't."

"I suppose they all talk that way. 'T ain't like Tom to lie about anything though. He generally faces it out, rain, hail, or shine. I wish to goodness he could prove that he didn't kill George. Where are you going, Janet?"

"To fetch Aunt Martha and Barbara. I wish they'd let Tom come too."

Grayson spent as much time as possible in getting his hat and looking it over before putting it on. Then, when he could think of no other pretext for delay, he started as slowly as possible, in order to give Janet time to fetch his relatives away from the jail before he should encounter them. Janet found her aunt coming out of the prison in order to allow the sheriff to go to breakfast.

"Aunt Martha," cried Janet, "Ma wants you an' Barbara to come to breakfast. She sent me to tell you."

"I don't like to go there," said Barbara to her mother in an undertone.

But Mason, who was behind, perceiving Barbara's hesitation, came up and whispered: "You'd better go, Barbara. Tom will need all the help he can get from your uncle's position. And I'll take the horse and put him into your uncle's stable."

XV
ABRAHAM LINCOLN

The village of Moscow was founded by adventurous pioneers while yet Napoleon's Russian expedition was fresh in all men's minds, and took from that memory its Russian name, which, like most other transplanted names of the sort, was universally mispronounced. The village had been planted in what is called an "island," that is, a grove surrounded by prairie on every side. The early settlers in Illinois were afraid to seat themselves far from wood. As it stands to-day the pretty town is arranged about a large public square, neatly fenced, and with long hitching-rails on all four sides of it. The inside of the square is trimly kept, and is amply shaded by old forest-trees – the last survivors of the grove that formed the "island." Moscow contains a court-house, which is pretentious and costly, if not quite elegant, besides other public buildings. On the streets facing this park-like square nearly all the trade of the thriving country-town is carried on. But in the time of Tom Grayson's imprisonment the public square was yet a rough piece of woods, with roots and stumps still obtruding where underbrush and trees had been cut out. There was no fence, and there were no hitching-rails. The court-house of that day was a newish frame building, which had the public-grounds all to itself except for the jail, on one corner of the square. Facing the square, on the side farthest from the jail, stood the village tavern. One half of it was of hewn logs, which marked it as dating back to the broad-ax period of the town's growth; the other half had been added after the saw-mill age began, and was yet innocent of paint, as were the court-house and several other of the principal buildings in the town. In front of the tavern was a native beech-tree, left behind in the general destruction. Under it were some rude benches which afforded a cool and favorite resort to the leisurely villagers. One of the boughs of this tree served its day and generation doubly, for besides contributing to the shadiness of the street-corner, it supported a pendant square sign, which creaked most dolefully whenever there was wind enough to set it swinging in its rusty iron sockets. The name of the hotel was one common to villages of small attainments and great hopes; the sign bore for legend in red letters: "City Hotel, R. Biggs."

To the City Hotel there came, on this first day after Tom's arrest, one of those solitary horsemen who gave life to nearly every landscape and mystery to nearly every novel of that generation. This horseman, after the fashion of the age, carried his luggage in a pair of saddle-bags, which kept time to his horse's trot by rapping against the flaps of his saddle.

"Howdy, Cap'n Biggs," said the traveler to the landlord, who was leaning solidly against the door-jamb and showing no sign of animation, except by slowly and intermittently working his jaws in the manner of a ruminating cow.

"Howdy, Abe," was the answer. "Where yeh boun' fer?"

"Perrysburg," said the new arrival, alighting and stretching the kinks out of his long, lank limbs, the horse meanwhile putting his head half-way to the ground and moving farther into the cool shade. Then the horseman proceeded to disengage his saddle-bags from the stirrup-straps, now on one side of the horse and then on the other.

"Have yer hoss fed some corn?" In asking this question Captain Biggs with some difficulty succeeded in detaching himself from the door-post, bringing his weight perpendicularly upon his legs; this accomplished he sluggishly descended the three door-steps to the ground and took hold of the bridle.

"What's this I hear about Tom Grayson, Cap'n?" said the new-comer, as he tried to pull and wriggle his trousers-legs down to their normal place.

"Oh, he's gone 'n' shot Lockwood, like the blasted fool he is. He wuz blowin' about it afore he lef' town las' month, but nobody reckoned it wuz anything but blow. Some trouble about k-yards an' a purty gal – John Albaugh's gal. I s'pose Tom's got to swing fer it, 'nless you kin kinder bewilder the jury like, an' git him off. Ole Mis' Grayson's in the settin'-room now, a-waitin' to see you about it."

Captain Biggs lifted his face, on which was a week's growth of stubby beard, to see how his guest would take this information. The tall, awkward young lawyer only drew his brow to a frown and said nothing; but turned and went into the tavern with his saddle-bags on his arm, and walking stiffly from being so long cramped in riding. Passing through the cool bar-room with its moist odors of mixed drinks, he crossed the hall into the rag-carpeted sitting-room beyond.

"Oh Abra'm, I'm that glad to see you!" But here the old lady's feelings overcame her and she could not go on.

"Howdy, Mrs. Grayson. It's too bad about Tom. How did he come to do it?"

"Lawsy, honey, he didn't do it."

"You think he didn't?"

"I know he didn't. He says so himself. I've been a-waitin' here all the mornin' to see you, an' git you to defend him."

The lawyer sat down on the wooden settee by Mrs. Grayson, and after a little time of silence said:

"You'd better get some older man, like Blackman."

"Tom won't have Blackman; he won't have nobody but Abe Lincoln, he says."

"But – they say the evidence is all against him; and if that's the case, an inexperienced man like me couldn't do any good."

Mrs. Grayson looked at him piteously as she detected his reluctance.

"Abra'm, he's all the boy I've got left. Ef you'll defend him I'll give you my farm an' make out the deed before you begin. An' that's all I've got."

"Farm be hanged!" said Lincoln. "Do you think I don't remember your goodness to me when I was a little wretch with my toes sticking out of my ragged shoes! I wouldn't take a copper from you. But you're Tom's mother, and of course you think he didn't do it. Now what if the evidence proves that he did?"

Barbara had been sitting in one corner of the room, and Lincoln had not observed her in the obscurity produced by the shade of the green slat curtains. She got up and came forward. "Abra'm, do you remember me?"

"Is this little Barby?" he said, scanning her face. "You're a young woman now, I declare."

There was a simple tenderness in his voice that showed how deeply he felt the trouble that had befallen the Graysons.

"Well, I want to say, Abra'm," Barbara went on, "that after talking to Tom we believe that he doesn't know anything about the shooting. Now you'd better go and see him for yourself."

"Well, I'll tell you what, Aunt Marthy," said he, relapsing into the familiar form of address he had been accustomed to use toward Mrs. Grayson in his boyhood; "I'll go over and see Tom, and if he is innocent, as you and Barby think, we'll manage to save him or know the reason why. But I must see him alone, and he mustn't know about my talk with you."

Lincoln got up, and laying his saddle-bags down in one corner of the room went out immediately. First he went to inquire of Sheriff Plunkett what was the nature of the evidence likely to be brought against Tom. Then he got the sheriff to let him into the jail and leave him alone with his client. Tom had been allowed to remain in the lighter apartment since there was no fear of his escape on this day, when all the town was agog about the murder, and people were continually coming to peer into the jail to get a glimpse of the monster who in the darkness had shot down one that had helped him out of a gambling scrape.

Lincoln sat down on the only stool there was in the room, while Tom sat on a bench.

"Now, Tom," said the lawyer, fixing his penetrating gaze on the young man's face, "you want to remember that I'm your friend and your counsel. However proper it may be to keep your own secret in such a situation as you are, you must tell me the whole truth, or else I cannot do you any good. How did you come to shoot Lockwood?"

"I didn't shoot Lockwood," said Tom brusquely; "and if you don't believe that it's no use to go on."

"Well, say I believe it then, and let's proceed. Tell me all that happened between you and that young man."

Tom began where this story begins and told all about turning the Bible at Albaugh's; about the gambling in Wooden & Snyder's store and how he was led into it; about his visit to Hubbard Township to get money to pay Lockwood, and Rachel's revelation of Lockwood's treachery in telling Ike. Then he told of his anger and his threatening, his uncle's break with him, and his talk with Barbara the evening before the murder; and finally he gave a circumstantial account of all that happened to him on the camp-ground, and of his flight and arrest.

"But," said Lincoln, who had looked closely and sometimes incredulously at Tom's face while he spoke, "why did you take a pistol with you to the camp-meeting?"

"I did not. I hadn't had a pistol in my hands for a week before the shooting."

"But Plunkett says there's a man ready to swear that he saw you do the shooting. They've got a pistol out of one of your drawers, and this witness will swear that you used just such an old-fashioned weapon as that."

"Good Lord, Abe! who would tell such an infernal lie on a fellow in my fix? That makes my situation bad." And Tom got up and walked the stone-paved floor in excitement. "But the bullet will show that I didn't do it. Get hold of the bullet, and if it fits the bore of that old-fashioned pistol I won't ask you to defend me."

"But there wasn't any bullet." Lincoln was now watching Tom's countenance with the closest scrutiny.

"No bullet! How in creation did they kill him, then?"

"Can't you think?" He was still studying Tom's face.

"I don't know any way of killing a fellow with a pistol that's got no bullet unless you beat his brains out with the butt of it, and I thought they said George was shot."

"So he was. But, Tom, I've made up my mind that you're innocent. It's going to be dreadful hard to prove it."

"But how was he killed?" demanded Tom.

"With buckshot."

Tom stood and mused a minute.

"Now tell me who says I did the shooting."

"I never heard of him before. Sovine, I believe his name is."

"Dave Sovine? W'y, he's the son of old Bill Sovine; he's the boy that ran off four years ago, don't you remember? He's the black-leg that won all my money. What does he want to get me hanged for? I paid him all I owed him."

Lincoln hardly appeared to hear what Tom was saying; he sat now with his eyes fixed on the grating, lost in thought.

"Tom," he said at length, "who was that strapping big knock-down fellow that used to be about your place – hunter, fisherman, fist-fighter, and all that?"

"Do you mean Bob McCord?"

"That must be the man. Big Bob, they called him. He's friendly to you, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes!"

"Well, you have Big Bob come to see me next Tuesday at the tavern, as I go back. I'll be there to dinner. And if you are called to the inquest, you have only to tell the truth. We won't make any fight before the coroner; you'll be bound over anyhow, and it's not best to show our hand too soon."

With that he took his leave. When he got out of the prison he found Mrs. Grayson and Barbara waiting to see him.

"Well, Aunt Marthy," he said, "it don't seem to me that your boy killed that fellow. It's going to be hard to clear him, but he didn't do it. I'll do my best. You must get all Tom's relations to come to the trial. And have Big Bob McCord come to see me next Tuesday."

The influence of Tom's uncle, judiciously directed by Hiram Mason, secured for the accused permission to remain in the light room of the prison in the day-time with manacles on, and to sleep in the dungeon at night without manacles. And the influence of Janet secured from Tom's aunt the loan of the clean though ancient and well-worn bedding and bed-linen that had been afforded him during his stay in his uncle's house. This was set up in the dark room of the jail in place of the bed that had been a resting-place for villains almost ever since the town was founded.

Understanding that Tom was to be taken to the coroner's inquest that afternoon, Hiram tried to persuade the sheriff to take him to Perrysburg jail at night for safety; for he had no knowledge of Bob McCord's plan for sending the mob there. But Plunkett refused this. He knew that such a change might offend Broad Run in case it should take a notion to enforce law in its own way, and Broad Run was an important factor in an election for county officers. Plunkett felt himself to be a representative sheriff. The voters of Broad Run and others of their kind had given him his majority, and he was in his place to do their will. Elevation to office had not spoiled him; he recognized in himself a humble servant of the people, whose duty it was to enforce the law whenever it did not conflict with the wishes of any considerable number of his "constituents." To his mind it did not appear to be of much consequence that a man who deserved hanging should receive his merited punishment at the hands of a mob, instead of suffering death according to the forms of law, after a few weeks or months of delay. But he was too cautious to reveal to Mason the true state of his mind; he only urged that the removal of Tom to Perrysburg would be an act of timidity that might promote the formation of a mob while it would not put Tom out of their reach; and this Mason could not deny.

XVI
THE CORONER'S INQUEST

The murder of George Lockwood furnished a powerful counter-excitement, which quite broke the continuity of religious feeling, and lacked little of completely breaking up the camp-meeting. Hundreds of men and women thronged about the place of the shooting and discussed all the probable and possible details of the affair, of which several versions were already current. The coroner ordered the body removed to a large barn in the neighborhood; whereupon the people rushed thither to get a sight of the dead man, for there is no source of excitement so highly prized by the vulgar as the ghastly. At 3 in the afternoon the barn was crowded. The people jostled one another closely upon the wide threshing-floor, and the wheat-mow alongside contained, among others, at least twenty women whose appetite for the horrible had led them to elbow their way early to this commanding situation. The hay-mow at the other end of the floor was full of men and boys, and the high girders were occupied by curious spectators, perched like rows of chimney-swifts at the time of autumnal flitting. More adventurous youth had managed to climb even into the dizzy collar-beams under the comb of the barn, to the dismay of the mason-swallows whose young were sheltered in adobe houses attached to the rafters. There were heads, and pendant legs, and foreshortened arms enough in the upper part of the barn to suggest a ceiling-fresco of the Last Judgment by an old Italian master. Other curious people had crowded into the horse stables below the wheat-mow, and were peering over the manger into the threshing-floor and intermingling their heads with those of the beasts of the stall, much as the aforementioned old Italian painters mix up brute and human faces in their Nativity pieces. The crowd upon the floor itself stretched out of the wide-open double doors on each hand, beyond which there was a surging mass of people blindly gravitating toward the center of excitement, though all the proceedings were invisible and inaudible to them.

On two boards supported by kegs and boxes lay the lifeless body of Lockwood. The pitiful sight of the pallid face and the eyes sunken in their sockets exasperated the spectators. Between the body and the hay-mow the coroner took his place on the only chair in the barn; at the opposite side of the corpse the jury was seated on improvised benches. Markham, the sheriff's deputy, assisted by a constable, kept back the press, whose centripetal force threatened at every movement to overwhelm the innocent jurymen.

As a matter of course, the first witness sworn was a doctor. Coroners begin at the beginning by first proving that the deceased is duly dead, and so within their jurisdiction; and by finding out by just what means the knife, rope, poison, or pistol ball severed the thread of existence. The human passion for completeness is as much prone to show itself in law proceedings as in art performances; coroners' inquests like to go down to the physiological principles that underlie the great fact of practical importance, and to inquire what was the name and function of the particular artery the severance of which put an end to consciousness in a set of ganglia which, with their complicated adjuncts, constitute what we call a man. It was in this case settled very promptly that the unfortunate deceased came to his death by a charge of buckshot. I shall not entertain the reader with the anatomical particulars, although these proved to be of the most pungent interest to the auditory at the inquest, and were scientifically expounded in every cross-roads grocery in the county for months afterward. There are old men in Illinois who haven't got done explaining the manner of it yet. But the important thing was accomplished when the coroner and his jury were convinced that the man was not only apparently, but scientifically, and therefore legally, dead; thus a basis was laid for the subsequent proceedings.

It is one of the strong points of a coroner that he knows nothing about what is held to be competent testimony, – nothing of the strict laws of relevancy and irrelevancy. He therefore goes to work to find out the truth in any way that seems good to him, without being balked by that vast network of regulations which are sure to embarrass the best endeavors of a more learned court. Markham was sworn immediately after the doctor had finished. It was his business to identify Tom's pistol. I fancy a lawyer might have insisted that no foundation had been laid for this testimony; but to the coroner it seemed the most orderly way, immediately after proving that Lockwood had been killed, to show the weapon with which he might have been killed. Markham swore to finding this pistol in Tom's room; and the ocular proof of the existence of such a weapon, in juxtaposition with the ghastly evidence before them of Lockwood's violent death, went far to establish Tom's guilt in the minds of the people. Then other witnesses swore to Tom's presence on the camp-ground; and two young men from Moscow had heard him threaten, some weeks before, that he would shoot George Lockwood.

It was just when the evidence of these two was finished that the people on the threshold of the south door of the barn began to sway to and fro in a sort of premonitory wave-motion, for outside of the door Sheriff Plunkett, having just arrived from Moscow with Tom Grayson, was battling with the condensed crowd in an endeavor to reach the presence of the coroner.

"You can't git through, Sher'f," said one man. "This crowd's so thick you could bore a nauger into it."

But the sheriff's progress was aided by the interest of the people in Tom. They could not resist turning about to look at him, and every movement displaced some human molecules; so that Plunkett, aided by the respect shown to him as an officer, was able to push a little farther in at every budge. But the people were not content with looking at Tom.

"You've got to swing fer it, you young rascal," said one man as Tom passed.

"Coward to shoot a man in the dark!" muttered another.

And ever as in this slow progress Tom came nearer to the center he felt the breath of the mob to be hotter. When he got within the door there was a confused rustle among the people on the threshing-floor, a murmur from those who jostled one another in the hay-mows, and a sound of indignation from the people seated on cross-beams and clinging to girders; mutterings even came down from those lodged like overhanging angels in the dizzy collar-beams, fast by the barn-swallows' nests. Such excited crowds are choruses who wait for some one to give them the key; the pitch of the first resolute voice determines the drift of feeling. If somebody had called out at this moment for fair play, the solvent feeling of the crowd might have crystallized about this one. But indignation got tongue first.

"Hang him!" The words came from the corner of the threshing-floor farthest from the coroner, and in an instant the tide of feeling ran swiftly to that side. Tom recognized the harsh voice, and realized his danger in perceiving that the resentful Jake Hogan was leading those who sought to lynch him.

When the sheriff, with Grayson, had penetrated to the neighborhood of the coroner, the inquest was continued by calling David Sovine. This young man, with stylish trousers strapped down to patent-leather shoes, came forward chewing tobacco and affecting a self-confident swagger. He took the oath nonchalantly.

"Tell us what you know of the murder of George Lockwood," said the coroner.

"Well, me an' George had been together, an' we parted. He was goin' to-wards his horse an' me to-wards the camp-meetin'. I was about twenty foot, or maybe twenty-five foot, away from 'im when along come Tom Grayson an' says, says he, 'I'm boun' to git even with you wunst fer all.' I looked aroun', an' Tom was aimin' his pistol. George Lockwood says, says he, 'Don't shoot me, Tom'; but Tom he up an' fired, an' George jist keeled over like, an' never said another word. Tom run off as fast as his legs could carry him. I run up to George, an' he was layin' there dead 's a door-nail. Then the crowd come a-runnin', an' that's about all I know about it."

"D' you remember the pistol?"

"Yes."

"Was it like this?"

"Yes; an ole-fashioned big bore single-barrel like that, I should say."

"That'll do. You can stand aside," said the coroner.

"Hang him!" cried Jake Hogan; and there were other cries that showed how swiftly and terribly the current was setting in the direction indicated by Jake.

Tom Grayson was sworn.

"Now," said the coroner, "you don't have to criminate yourself. If you cannot answer any question asked of you without criminating you, you can decline to give an answer."

For how many ages have Anglo-Saxons made their criminal law ridiculous by this rule!

"Now," the coroner went on, "tell us just what you know about the shooting at the camp-meeting."

"I don't know anything at all about it," said Tom with agitation. "I haven't seen George Lockwood since I quarreled with him in Moscow till I saw him here." And he pointed with a trembling finger to the stark form of the man he had hated.

"Lie!" cried Hogan. The coroner called, "Order!"

"Aw!" said one of the women in the wheat-mow. "To think he could have the impedence to hole up his head an' talk that away un the corpse right there afore his eyes!"

"Do you know that pistol?" asked the coroner.

Tom took it up and looked at some marks on the butt of it.

"It's mine," he said.

"Did you have it at the camp-meeting?"

"No, nor any other."

"You are not obliged to criminate yourself," said the coroner again; "but didn't you see Lockwood killed?"

"No," said Tom. "It's all a lie that Dave Sovine swore to, and he knows it. I wasn't on that part of the ground."

"Hang him!" interjected Hogan.

"The bah-y is awful plucky, upon me sowl," said Magill, who was standing on a plow-beam in order to see over the heads of the crowd. "It would be a pity to hang a man of such good stuff."

"The bare-faced villain!" growled the man next to him, and the unfavorable impression evidently had sway with the crowd. When people have once made up their mind as to how a thing has happened, they do not like to have their fixed notions disturbed. Tom's heart sank; he could see that the chance for his getting back to the jail alive was growing smaller. Hiram Mason had attached himself to Tom and the sheriff, and had elbowed his way to the front in their wake; the people, supposing that he had some official function, made way for him. He now got the ear of the sheriff.

"If you don't get Tom away at once he'll be lynched," he said.

"I know it; but I don't know what to do," said Plunkett. "If I make any move, I'll fetch the crowd down on Tom."

"Get him down into the cow-stable under the barn, and let Markham take him off. You stay here and they won't suspect that he's gone."

There was something pitiable about the sheriff's inability to make a decision at a critical moment. He looked at the angry crowd, who were paying little attention to the testimony of unimportant witnesses, and he looked at the coroner. He didn't like to bear the responsibility of having a prisoner taken from his hands; still more he disliked to offend so many voters.

"Settle it with Markham and the coroner," he said, sneaking out of the decision he could not bring himself to make.

"Mr. Markham," whispered Hiram, "the sheriff wants you and me to get Tom off. I'll get the horses ready, and you and Tom are to come out through the cow-stable. Speak to the coroner about it, and don't let the crowd see it. If we don't get him away before this thing breaks up he'll never get to town alive."

"All right," said Markham. "I'll be in the cow-stable with Tom when you're ready."

Jake Hogan had already gone out to muster his men, and Hiram was very impatient at the long time it took him to work his way outward. He was a little annoyed when Magill, getting down from the plow-beam, stopped him to whisper:

"I say, you're Tom's friend. Now what can I do for the bah-y? I s'pose he's guilty, but I don't want to see such a bowld gintleman as he is lynched by such a set of howlin' blackguards as these."

"Go over there and stand in front of Tom, so that the people won't see him and Markham when they get down into the cow-stable."

Having whispered this between his teeth, Mason painfully worked his way out of the door, while Magill pushed forward toward the coroner. For Magill the people made way as best they could, supposing that the clerk was one of the functionaries without whom the performance could not proceed. The coroner had acceded to Markham's proposition and was contriving to protract the session. Magill called Sheriff Plunkett to him and made that worthy stand in unimportant conversation with him, so that they two covered from all observers first Markham's descent and then Tom's. The deputy sheriff and then his prisoner had to climb over a hay-rack and thence down to the ground. The cow-stable was beneath that end of the barn which jutted over a hill-side descending to a brook. As nothing was to be seen from this stable, there was nobody in it but a few boys.