"Only just got here?" said the sheriff, rising up in bed. "Only just
come? Then there's another crowd that must 'a' done the business ahead
of you. There was more 'n forty men surrounded this house awhile ago,
and beat down my door, and come upstairs here in this room, and knocked
me down and choked me black and blue and went off with the keys. I guess
they've hung Tom and gone before this."
"Looky h-yer now, we don't want no more uv your tricks. We're the on'y
party out to-night, sartin shore, un we're boun' to have them air keys
ur die," said Jake, tragically. "You might's well gin 'em up fust _as_
last, Hank Plunkett, un save yourself trouble."
"Well, if you want 'em, you'll have to look 'em up," said the sheriff.
"I haven't got 'em, and I'll be hanged if I know who has. I was knocked
down and nearly killed by a whole lot of men. Kill me, if you've got a
mind to, but you won't find the keys in this house. So there now." And
he lay back on his pillow.
"Come on, boys; we'll s'arch the jail. Un ef we've been fooled weth,
Hank Plunkett'll have to pay fer it."
With that the Broad Run boys departed and the sheriff got up and dressed
himself. There was a mystery about two lynching parties in one night;
and there might be something in it that would affect his bond or his
political prospects if it were not looked into at once. He resolved to
alarm the town.
At the jail door Hogan encountered Barbara piteously begging the men to
spare her brother's life.
"Looky h-yer," he said, in a graveyard voice, "this ain't no kind uv a
place fer women folks. You go 'way."
"No, I won't go away. I'm Tom's sister and I won't leave him. You
mustn't shoot him. He didn't kill George Lockwood."
"You mus' go 'way, ur you'll git shot yer own self," said Jake.
"Well, shoot me--d' you think I care? I'd rather die with Tom. I know
your voice, Jake Hogan; and if you kill Tom you'll be a murderer, for he
isn't."
"Take her away, boys," said Jake, a little shaken by this unexpected
appeal. But nobody offered to remove Barbara. All of these rude fellows
were touched at sight of her tears. It had not occurred to them to take
into account the sister or the mother when they thoughtlessly resolved
to hang Tom. But the path of the reformer is always beset by such
thorns.
"Down weth that ar door!" cried Jake, not to be baffled in his
resolution, and convinced by Barbara's solicitude that Tom was certainly
within. There was reason for haste too, for the villagers were already
stirring, and there might be opposition to his summary proceedings. But
pompous commands have not much effect on heavy doors, and Jake found
that this one would not down so easily as he hoped. Jake began pounding
on it with the poll of an ax borrowed from a neighboring wood-pile, and
meanwhile dispatched two men to break open the blacksmith shop and
fetch a sledge-hammer. But S'manthy's boy, on his own motion, went
around to the back of the jail with the purpose of trying the window.
Finding it as Bob had left it, with the grating torn out, he entered the
jail and penetrated to the dungeon, coming back presently to tell Jake
that he had found the window out, the dungeon door open, and Tom "clean
gone."
"Thunder!" said Jake, dropping his ax. "Who could they be? The shuruff
says they wuz more 'n forty on 'em; so they couldn't be rescuers. They
hain't ten men in the wide worl' 'at thinks Tom's innercent. Like 's not
it's a lot uv fellers f'um the south-east of the k-younty, down
to_wards_ Hardscrabble, whar Lockwood had some kin. They've hung him
summers. Let's ride 'roun' un see ef we kin fin' any traces. Un ef Hank
Plunkett has played a trick, we'll git squar' some day, ur my name
hain't Hogan."
The men mounted and rode off. Barbara, who stood by in agony while Jake
beat upon the door, and who had heard the report that Tom was gone,
could not resist the despairing conclusion that he must have suffered
death. In her broken-hearted perplexity she could think of nothing
better than to hurry to the tavern where Hiram Mason was a boarder. Half
the people of the village were by this time in the streets, running here
and there and saying the most contradictory things. Mason had been
awakened with the rest, and by the time Barbara reached the tavern door,
she encountered him coming out.
"W'y, Barbara! for goodness' sake, what brought you out? What _has_
happened?" he said.
"O Mr. Mason! I'm afraid Tom's dead. I ran after Jake Hogan and his men
when I heard them pass, and begged Jake to let Tom off. They tried to
drive me away, but I staid; and when they got into jail, Tom wasn't
there. Jake said that the sheriff said he had been taken away and
lynched by more than forty men. Oh, if they have killed the poor boy!"
"Maybe it isn't so bad," said Hiram, as he took her left hand in his
right and led her, as he might have led a weeping child, along the dark
street toward her uncle's house. "Don't cry any more, Barbara!"
"I shouldn't wonder," he said, after a while, "if Bob McCord knows
something of this."
"But we left him at home to-night," said Barbara; and then she began to
weep again, and to say over and over in an undertone, "O my poor Tom!"
Mason could not say any more. He only grasped her hand the more firmly
in his and walked on. Presently a wagon came across the walk just in
front of them, issuing from an alley.
"That's Butts's wagon, and that's his bay colt, I do believe," said
Barbara, looking sharply at the dark silhouette of the horse. "I know
the way that horse carries his head. I wonder if Butts has been mean
enough to have anything to do with this wicked business."
What Barbara saw was Zeke Tucker hastening to replace the horse in the
stable, while Bob remained in town to keep a furtive watch over the
court-house till morning. Mason thought he saw some one moving in the
alley, and a detective impulse seized him.
"Stay here a moment, Barbara," he said, and letting go of her hand he
ran into the alley and came plump upon the burly form of Bob McCord.
"It's all right, Mr. Mason," chuckled Bob. "Tom's safe 'n' soun' where
they'll never find him. By thunder!" And Bob looked ready to explode
with laughter; the whole thing was to him one of the best of jokes.
"Come and tell Barbara," said Mason.
Bob came out of the alley to where Barbara was standing near the
white-spotted trunk of a young sycamore, and recounted briefly how he
had fooled Butts, and how he had got the keys from Plunkett. His
resonant laughter grated on Barbara's feelings, but she was too grateful
to him to resent the rudeness of his nature.
"Where is Tom?" Barbara asked.
"Oh! I'm a-playin' Abe Lincoln," said Bob in a whisper. "The fewer that
knows, the better it'll be. Tom says he won't light out, unless Abra'm
says to. Speak'n' of Abe Lincoln," he said, "I don't want to be seed
weth him to-night. You go back, Mr. Mason, un tell Abe 't Tom's safe. Ef
he thinks Tom's chances is better to stan' trial, w'y, he'll find 'im in
the court-house to-morry when the court wants 'im, shore as shootin'.
He's on'y out on bail to-night," said Bob, unwilling to lose his joke.
"But ef Abe thinks Tom hain't got no chance afore a jury, let 'im jest
wink one eye, kind-uh, un 'fore daybreak I'll have the boy tucked into a
bear's hole 't I know of, un he kin lay there safe fer a week un then
put out for Wisconsin, ur Missouri, ur the Ioway country. You go 'n' let
Abe know, un I'll see Barb'ry safe home--she won't gimme the mitten
to-night, I 'low." And Bob chuckled heartily; life was all so droll to
this man, blessed with a perfect digestion and not worried by any
considerable sense of responsibility.
Mason went up to Lincoln's room and awakened him to tell him the story
of the night. The lawyer's face relaxed, and at length he broke into a
merry but restrained laughter. He saw almost as much fun in it as Bob
McCord had, and Mason felt a little out of patience that he should be so
much amused over such a life-and-death affair.
"Tom doesn't want to be an outlaw," said Lincoln very gravely, when the
question of Tom's going or staying was put to him. "I don't believe he
could escape; and if he did, life would hardly be worth the having.
There is only just one chance of proving his innocence, but I think he'd
better stay and take that. Maybe we'll fail; if we do, it may yet be
time enough to fall back on Bob and his bear's hole. By the way, where
has Bob stowed Tom for the night?"
"Bob won't tell," said Mason. "He says he's playing Abe Lincoln; and the
fewer that know, the better."
Lincoln laughed again, and nodded his head approvingly. "So he brings
Tom to court in good time," he said.
Mason went out and encountered Bob in the street, and gave him Lincoln's
decision. Then Hiram went and told Barbara about it, and sat with her
and her mother until morning. A while before daybreak, finding the town
free from any person disposed to molest Tom, Bob came to Barbara and had
her make a cup of coffee and give him a sandwich or two. These he took
out of the back gate of the Grayson garden and left them with Tom in the
court-house.
The next morning at half-past 6 o'clock the lawyers of the circuit took
their seats at the breakfast-table in the meagerly furnished,
fly-specked dining-room of the tavern, the windows of which were
decorated with limp chintz curtains, and the space of which was entirely
filled with the odors of coffee and fried ham, mingled with smells
emitted by the rough-coat plastering and the poplar of the woodwork:
this compound odor of the building was a genius of the place. The old
judge, who sat at the end of the table opposite to that occupied by the
landlady, spread his red silk handkerchief across his lap preparatory to
beginning his meal, and looked up from under his overhanging brows at
Lincoln, who was just taking his seat.
"What's this, Lincoln? I hear your client was carried off last night by
a mob of forty or fifty men and probably hanged. And you don't even get
up early to see about it."
"My client will be in court this morning, Judge," said the lawyer,
looking up from his plate.
"What!"
"I am informed that he is in a safe place, and he will be ready for
trial this morning."
"Where is he?" asked the judge, looking penetratingly at Lincoln.
[Illustration: "'WHERE IS HE?' ASKED THE JUDGE."]
"I should be glad to tell your Honor; but the fact is, I can't manage to
find out myself."
Then one of the other lawyers spoke up. "Lincoln, from what you say, I
suppose the first mob took Grayson to save him from the second. But I
don't see how the Old Boy you raised forty men on your side. I wouldn't
have believed that the poor devil had so many friends."
"I? I didn't raise any men. I was sound asleep, and didn't know a word
about it until the row was all over."
After breakfast there was much discussion of the case among the lawyers
standing in a group in the bar-room. What would Lincoln do? Why had he
not moved for a change of venue? Why had he subpoenaed no witnesses?
Would he plead necessary self-defense, or would Tom plead guilty and
throw himself on the mercy of the governor?
The sheriff was very active in the latter part of the night in telling
his story and in making a display of zeal. It was he who had taken time
by the forelock in telling the judge all about the events of the night;
how his door had been beaten in by a great mob; how he had been rudely
knocked down and choked until he was almost insensible; and how pistols
had been cocked and placed against his head. Then he told of the coming
of the second mob. He did not know which way Tom had been taken, or
whether he had been hanged or not, but he had sent the deputy to make
inquiries.
In making an examination of the prison after daylight, Sheriff Plunkett
found the keys of the jail inside of the hall-way, as though they had
been thrown in at the broken-down window. When he went to force the
court-house door, the key belonging to it was found lying on the
doorstep; and when on opening the door he saw Tom with his manacles on,
awaiting him, his surprise was complete.
"I thought you'd been hung," he said.
"Not yet," said Tom, grimly.
"Say, where did that mob come from that got you out?"
"You can't question me," said Tom. "I'm not a witness to-day; I'm a
prisoner."
Many of the excited people, moved by the restive longings of a vague
curiosity, had followed the sheriff into the court-room, and the news of
Tom's presence there soon spread throughout the village. There were
already all sorts of contradictory and exciting rumors in the streets
about the events of the preceding night; women let their breakfast
coffee boil over while they discussed the affair across back fences; men
almost forgot to eat anything in their eagerness for news; country
people were flocking in by all the roads and listening to all sorts of
contradictory tales told by the villagers. When it became known that Tom
was alive and awaiting his trial there was a general rush to secure
seats, and the court-room was filled long before the bell in its belfry
had announced the hour for the trial to begin.
XXVI
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
At last the sheriff's new deputy went up the court-house stairs, and
pulled away on the rope that rattled the bell in the belfry--a bell that
uttered its notes in irregular groups, now pausing for breath, and now
sending one hurried stroke clattering hard on the heels of another. Its
clanking had no more dignity than the words of a gossip eagerly tattling
small news. While the bell was yet banging, Judge Watkins's iron-gray
head and stooped shoulders appeared; he pushed his way slowly through
the press, his brows contracted in impatience at finding even the
physical progress of the court obstructed by the vulgar. The people
squeezed themselves as nearly flat as possible in the endeavor to make
way for his Honor, of whom they were as much in awe as school-boys of a
stern master. Bob McCord, erect in the aisle, was an island in the very
channel, and the most serious obstacle to the judge's passage; nor did
it help things for Bob to turn sidewise, for he was equally obtrusive in
all his dimensions. The judge was a good deal ruffled in his endeavors
to pull by him.
"I wish I _wuz_ littler, Jedge," said Bob, with a fearless laugh that
startled the bystanders, "but I can't seem to take myself in another
eench."
The dyspeptic judge was not without a sense of humor. It would be a
derogation from his dignity to say that he smiled at Bob's apology; but
certainly there was a little relaxation of his brows, and a less severe
set to his lips, when he finally edged past and left the crowd to close
around Big Bob again.
The judge began the session by ordering the sheriff to bring in the
grand jury. This in turn was no easy task; but at length that body
succeeded in descending the stairs, defiling through the aisle, and
getting into the jury box. In a few words, precise and tart, the judge
charged the grand jurymen to inquire into two lawless attacks which had
been made on the sheriff during the night; into the conduct of the
sheriff; and into the evidently insecure condition of the county jail.
Then, when the members of the grand inquest had reluctantly made their
painful way up the stairs to their room overhead, the judge called the
case of _The People of the State of Illinois versus Thomas Grayson,
Junior_, and there was a hush in the crowded court-room.
Tom sat regarding the crowd with such feelings as a gladiator doomed to
mortal combat might have had in looking on the curious spectators in the
Coliseum. Mrs. Grayson and Barbara had been provided with chairs within
the bar; but on his mother and sister Tom did not dare to let his eyes
rest. He saw, however, without looking directly at them, that little
Janet was standing by Barbara, and that his uncle sat with crest-fallen
face by his mother's side, and that his Aunt Charlotte had not come at
all. Just outside of the bar, but immediately behind Mrs. Grayson, so as
to form one of the group, stood Hiram Mason, erect and unblushing. One
of the landmarks on which Tom's gaze rested oftenest was the burly form
and round, ruddy face of Big Bob McCord, half way between the judge and
the door. And at one of the open windows there presently appeared the
lank countenance of Jake Hogan, who had climbed up from the outside,
with the notion that he was somehow bound to supervise the
administration of public justice. He managed with difficulty to get
perching-room on the window-sill. Into two of the raised back seats a
group of women had squeezed themselves to their last density, and among
them, singular and conspicuous as she always was, sat Rachel Albaugh.
Tom's was not the only eye that observed her; the lawyers from other
counties were asking one another who she was, and she had even attracted
the attention of the judge himself; for a gallant interest in
good-looking women lingers late in a Virginia gentleman, no matter how
austere his mold. At a pause in the preliminary proceedings the judge
spoke to the clerk, sitting just below and in front of him, at a raised
desk.
"Magill, who is that girl?" he asked.
"Which one, Judge?" queried Magill, pretending to be in doubt.
"You needn't look so innocent. Of course I mean the one a modest man
can't look at without being a little ashamed of himself. You know her
well enough, I'm sure."
"I s'pose yer Honor manes John Albaugh's daughter," said Magill. "She's
the one that's at the bottom of all this row, they say."
As soon as the judge heard that Rachel's beauty had something to do with
the case in hand he fell back into his official reserve, as though he
felt a scruple that to talk about her, or even to take note of her
beauty, might be, in some sort, a receiving of evidence not properly
before the court.
The jury was very soon impaneled, for in that day entire ignorance of
the matter in hand was not thought indispensable to a wise decision.
Lincoln made no objection to any of the names drawn for jurymen except
that of Abijah Grimes, of Broad Run Township. The exclusion of Bijy's
open countenance from the jury box was another blow to Jake Hogan's
faith in the institutions of the land. His brow visibly darkened; here
was one more sign that a rich man's nephew could not be punished, and
that a poor man hadn't no kind uv a chance in sech a dodrotted country.
No time was spent in an opening speech; the preliminary oratory, by
which our metropolitan barristers consume the time of an indulgent court
and make a show of earning their preposterous fees, was rarely indulged
in that simpler land and time. The fees paid, indeed, would not have
justified the making of two speeches.
No portion of the crowd tucked into the four walls of the Moscow
court-house showed more interest in the trial than the members of the
bar. The unsolved mystery that hung about Lincoln's line of defense, the
absence of any witnesses in Tom's behalf, the neglect of all the
ordinary precautions, such as the seeking of a change of venue, produced
a kind of flurry of expectation inside of the bar; and the lawyers in
their blue sparrow-tail coats with brass buttons, which constituted then
a kind of professional uniform, moved about with as much animation as
uneasy jay-birds, to which the general effect of their costume gave them
a sort of family likeness. Their attention was divided, it is true; for
when a member of the bar did succeed in settling himself into a chair,
which he always canted back on its hind legs, he was pretty sure to get
into a position that would enable him to get a glance now and then at
the face of Rachel Albaugh, who was interesting, not only for her
beauty, but on account of her supposed relation to the case actually
before the court. Never had Rachel's lustrous eyes seemed finer, never
had her marvelous complexion shown a tint more delicious; her interest
in the case lent animation to her expression, and her attitude of
listening set off the graceful turn of her features.
The prosecuting attorney called Henry Miller to prove that Tom had been
irritated with Lockwood at Albaugh's, but Henry did what he could for
Tom, by insisting that it didn't "amount to anything" as a quarrel; it
was "only a huff," he said. The next witness called was the nervous
young man who had stood balancing himself on the threshold of Wooden &
Snyder's store when Tom had threatened Lockwood, in paying back the
money borrowed to discharge his gambling debt. He was a habitual gossip,
and the story lost nothing from his telling. He did not forget to
mention with evident pleasure that Rachel Albaugh's name had been used
in that quarrel. At this point Rachel, finding too many eyes turned from
the witness to the high seat at the back of the room, lowered her green
veil.
Then the carpenter who had bought a three-cornered file on the morning
of Tom's outburst against Lockwood also swore to the details of that
affair as he remembered them, and the villager who had come in to buy
nails to repair his garden fence gave a third version of the quarrel;
but Snyder, the junior proprietor of the store, told the incident as it
was colored by his partisanship for Lockwood and in a way the most
damaging to Tom. He swore that Lockwood was really afraid of Tom, and
that at Lockwood's suggestion he had himself got Blackman to speak to
Tom's uncle about it. The young men followed who had heard Tom say, as
he left town after his break with his uncle, that George Lockwood was
the cause of all his troubles, and that Lockwood "had better not get in
his way again, if he knew what was good for him."
Lincoln sat out that forenoon without making a note, without raising an
objection, without asking the witnesses a question, and without a book
or a scrap of paper before him. He did not break silence at all, except
to waive the cross-examination of each witness. The impression made in
Tom's favor by his voluntary appearance at the trial, when he might
perhaps have got away, was by this time dissipated, and the tide set now
overwhelmingly against him; and to this tide his self-contained lawyer
had offered not the slightest opposition. It was a serious question even
among the lawyers whether or not Lincoln had given up the case. But if
he had given up the case, why did he not fight on every small point, as
any other lawyer would have done, for the sake of making a show of zeal?
To Allen, the public prosecutor, there was something annoying and
ominous in Lincoln's silence; something that made him apprehensive of he
knew not what.
When the court took its noon recess Barbara and her mother were in utter
despondency. It seemed to them that Lincoln was letting the case go by
default, while the prosecuting attorney was full of energetic activity.
"Abra'm," said Mrs. Grayson, intercepting Lincoln as he passed out of
the bar with his hat drawn down over his anxious brows, "ain't ther'
nothin' you kin do for Tom? Can't you show 'em that he never done it?"
"I'll do whatever I can, Aunt Marthy, but you must leave it to me." So
saying, he quickly left her and pushed on out of the door, while his
learned brethren gathered into a group within the bar, and unanimously
agreed in condemning his neglect of every opportunity to break the force
of the evidence against Tom. Why had he not objected to much of it, why
had he not cross-questioned, why did he not ask for a change of venue
yesterday?
When the sheriff and his deputy, at the close of this forenoon session,
passed out of the court-house with Tom, there was a rush of people
around and in front of them. Men and boys climbed up on wagons, tree
stumps, and whatever afforded them a good view of the criminal. For the
most part the people were only moved by that heartless curiosity which
finds a pleasurable excitement in the sight of other people's woes, but
there was also very manifest an increasing resentment toward Tom, and
not a little of that human ferocity which is easily awakened in time of
excitement and which reminds us of a sort of second cousinship that
subsists between a crowd of men and a pack of wolves--or between a pack
of men and a crowd of wolves.