"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 subpœnaed 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.
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.
When Tom found himself at length landed within the friendly prison walls, out of sight and hearing of the unfeeling crowd, he was in the deepest dejection. For what, indeed, that could happen now would be sufficient to turn back such a tide of popular condemnation? Barbara came to him presently with a dinner more relishable than that which the sheriff was accustomed to serve to prisoners, and all the way to the jail idle people had strolled after her; and though no one treated her with disrespect, she could hear them saying, "That's his sister," and their voices were neither sympathetic nor friendly. When she set down the tray on one of the stools in front of Tom, she kept her eyes averted from his, lest he should detect the despondency that she knew herself to be incapable of hiding. On his part, Tom made a feint to eat the food, for Barbara's sake. But after examining first one tid-bit and then another, essaying to nibble a little first at this and then at that, he got up abruptly and left the whole.
"'T isn't any use, Barb," he said, huskily. "I can't eat."
And Barbara, knowing how much need her brother had for all his self-control, did not trust herself to speak, but took up the tray and went out again, leaving Tom, when the deputy had locked the door, sitting alone on the bench with his head between his hands.
The people who had seats in the court-room were, for the most part, too wise in their generation to vacate them during the noon recess. Jake Hogan clambered down from his uncomfortable window-roost for a little while, and Bob McCord took a plunge into the grateful fresh air, but both got back in time to secure their old points of observation. The lawyers came back early, and long before the judge returned the ruddy-faced Magill was seated behind his little desk, facing the crowd and pretending to write. He was ill at ease; the heart of the man had gone out to Tom. He never for a moment doubted that Tom killed Lockwood, but then a sneak like Lockwood "richly desarved it," in Magill's estimation. Judge Watkins's austere face assumed a yet more severe expression; for though pity never interfered with justice in his nature, it often rendered the old man unhappy, and therefore more than usually irascible.
There was a painful pause after the judge had taken his seat and ordered the prisoner brought in. It was like a wait before a funeral service, but rendered ten times more distressing by the element of suspense. The judge's quill pen could be heard scratching on the paper as he noted points for his charge to the jury. To Hiram Mason the whole trial was unendurable. The law had the aspect of a relentless boa-constrictor, slowly winding itself about Tom, while all these spectators, with merely a curious interest in the horrible, watched the process. The deadly creature had now to make but one more coil, and then, in its cruel and deliberate fashion, it would proceed to tighten its twists until the poor boy should be done to death. Barbara and the mother were entwined by this fate as well, while Hiram had not a little finger of help for them. He watched Lincoln as he took seat in moody silence. Why had the lawyer not done anything to help Tom? Any other lawyer with a desperate case would have had a stack of law-books in front of him, as a sort of dam against the flood. But Lincoln had neither law-books nor so much as a scrap of paper.
The prosecuting attorney, with a taste for climaxes, reserved his chief witness to the last. Even now he was not ready to call Sovine. He would add one more stone to the pyramid of presumptive proof before he capped it all with certainty. Markham was therefore put up to identify the old pistol which he had found in Tom's room. Lincoln again waived cross-examination. Blackman felt certain that he himself could have done better. He mentally constructed the questions that should have been put to the deputy sheriff. Was the pistol hot when you found it? Did it smell of powder? Did the family make any objection to your search?—Even if the judge had ruled out such questions the jury would have heard the questions, and a question often has weight in spite of rulings from the bench. The prosecuting attorney began to feel sure of his own case; he had come to his last witness and his great stroke.
"Call David Sovine," he said, wiping his brow and looking relieved.
"David Sovine! David Sovine! David Sovine!" cried the sheriff in due and ancient form, though David sat almost within whispering distance of him.
The witness stood up.
"Howld up your roight hand," said the clerk.
Then when Dave's right hand was up Magill rattled off the form of the oath in the most approved and clerkly style, only adding to its effect by the mild brogue of his pronunciation.
"Do sol'm swear 't yull tell th' truth, th' 'ole truth, en nuthin' b' th' truth, s' yilpye God," said the clerk, without once pausing for breath.
Sovine ducked his head and dropped his hand, and the solemnity was over.
Dave, who was evidently not accustomed to stand before such a crowd, appeared embarrassed. He had deteriorated in appearance lately. His patent-leather shoes were bright as ever, his trousers were trimly held down by straps, his hair was well kept in place by bear's oil or what was sold for bear's oil, but there was a nervousness in his expression and carriage that gave him the air of a man who has been drinking to excess. Tom looked at him with defiance, but Dave was standing at the right of the judge, while the prisoner's dock was on the left, and the witness did not regard Tom at all, but told his story with clearness. Something of the bold assurance which he displayed at the inquest was lacking. His coarse face twitched and quivered, and this appeared to annoy him; he sought to hide it by an affectation of nonchalance, as he rested his weight now on one foot and now on the other.
"Do you know the prisoner?" asked the prosecutor, with a motion of his head toward the dock.
"Yes, well enough"; but in saying this Dave did not look toward Tom, but out of the window.
"You've played cards with him, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"Tell his Honor and the jury when and where you played with him."
"We played one night last July, in Wooden & Snyder's store."
"Who proposed to Tom to play with you?"
"George Lockwood. He hollered up the stove-pipe for Tom to come down an' take a game or two with me."
"What did you win that night from Tom?"
"Thirteen dollars, an' his hat an' coat an' boots, an' his han'ke'chi'f an' knife."
"Who, if anybody, lent him the money to get back his things which you had won?"
"George Lockwood."
Here the counsel paused a moment, laid down a memorandum he had been using, and looked about his table until he found another; then he resumed his questions.
"Tell the jury whether you were at the Timber Creek camp-meeting on the 9th of August."
"Yes; I was."
"What did you see there? Tell about the shooting."
Dave told the story, with a little prompting in the way of questions from the lawyer, substantially as he had told it at the coroner's inquest. He related his parting from Lockwood, Tom's appearance on the scene, Tom's threatening speech, Lockwood's entreaty that Tom would not shoot him, and then Tom's shooting. In making these statements Dave looked at the stairway in the corner of the court-room with an air of entire indifference, and he even made one or two efforts to yawn, as though the case was a rather dull affair to him.
"How far away from Mason and Lockwood were you when the shooting took place?" asked the prosecutor.
"Twenty foot or more."
"What did Tom shoot with?"
"A pistol."
"What kind of a pistol?"
"One of the ole-fashion' sort—flint-lock, weth a ruther long barrel."
The prosecuting lawyer now beckoned to the sheriff, who handed down to him, from off his high desk, Tom's pistol.
"Tell the jury whether this looks like the pistol."
"'T was just such a one as that. I can't say it was that, but it was hung to the stock like that, an' about as long in the barrel."
"What did Grayson do when he had shot George, and what did you do?"
"Tom run off as fast as his feet could carry him, an' I went up towards George, who'd fell over. He was dead ag'inst I could get there. Then purty soon the crowd come a-runnin' up to see what the fracas was."
After bringing out some further details Allen turned to his opponent with an air of confidence and said:
"You can have the witness, Mr. Lincoln."
There was a brief pause, during which the jurymen changed their positions on the hard seats, making a little rustle as they took their right legs from off their left and hung their left legs over their right knees, or vice versa. In making these changes they looked inquiringly at one another, and it was clear that their minds were so well made up that even a judge's charge in favor of the prisoner, if such a thing had been conceivable, would have gone for nothing. Lincoln at length rose slowly from his chair, and stood awhile in silence, regarding Sovine, who seemed excited and nervous, and who visibly paled a little as his eyes sought to escape from the lawyer's gaze.
"You said you were with Lockwood just before the shooting?" the counsel asked.
"Yes." Dave was all alert and answered promptly.
"Were you not pretty close to him when he was shot?"
"No, I wasn't," said Dave, his suspicions excited by this mode of attack. It appeared that the lawyer, for some reason, wanted to make him confess to having been nearer to the scene and perhaps implicated, and he therefore resolved to fight off.
"Are you sure you were as much as ten feet away?"
"I was more than twenty," said Dave, huskily.
"What had you and George Lockwood been doing together?"
"We'd been—talking." Manifestly Dave took fresh alarm at this line of questioning.
"Oh, you had?"
"Yes."
"In a friendly way?"
"Yes, tubby shore; we never had any fuss."
"You parted from him as a friend?"
"Yes, of course."
"By the time Tom came up you'd got—how far away? Be careful now."
"I've told you twiste. More than twenty feet."
"You might have been mistaken about its being Tom then?"
"No, I wasn't."
"Did you know it was Tom before he fired?"
"Tubby shore, I did."
"What time of night was it?"
"Long towards 10, I sh'd think."
"It might have been 11?"
"No, 't wusn't later'n about 10." This was said doggedly.
"Nor before 9?"
"No, 't wus nigh onto 10, I said." And the witness showed some irritation, and spoke louder than before.
"How far away were you from the pulpit and meeting-place?"
"'Twixt a half a mile an' a mile."
"Not over a mile?"
"No, skiercely a mile."
"But don't you think it might have been a little less than half a mile?"
"No, it's nigh onto a mile, I didn't measure it, but it's a mighty big three-quarters."
The witness answered combatively, and in this mood he made a better impression than he did on his direct examination. The prosecuting attorney looked relieved. Tom listened with an attention painful to see, his eyes moving anxiously from Lincoln to Dave as he wondered what point in Dave's armor the lawyer could be driving at. He saw plainly that his salvation was staked on some last throw.
"You didn't have any candle in your hand, did you, at any time during the evening?"
"No!" said Dave, positively. For some reason this question disconcerted him and awakened his suspicion. "What should we have a candle for?" he added.
"Did either George Lockwood or Tom have a candle?"
"No, of course not! What 'd they have candles for?"
"Where were the lights on the camp-ground?"
"Closte by the preachers' tent."
"More than three-quarters of a mile away from the place where the murder took place?"
"Anyway as much as three-quarters," said Dave, who began to wish that he could modify his previous statement of the distance.
"How far away were you from Lockwood when the murder took place?"
"Twenty feet."
"You said 'or more' awhile ago."
"Well, 't wusn't no less, p'r'aps," said Dave, showing signs of worry. "You don't think I measured it, do yeh?"
"There were no lights nearer than three-quarters of a mile?"
"No," said the witness, the cold perspiration beading on his face as he saw Lincoln's trap opening to receive him.
"You don't mean to say that the platform torches up by the preachers' tent gave any light three-quarters of a mile away and in the woods?"
"No, of course not."
"How could you see Tom and know that it was he that fired, when the only light was nearly a mile away, and inside a circle of tents?"
"Saw by moonlight," said Sovine, snappishly, disposed to dash at any gap that offered a possible way of escape.
"What sort of trees were there on the ground?"
"Beech."
"Beech-leaves are pretty thick in August?" asked Lincoln.
"Ye-es, ruther," gasped the witness, seeing a new pitfall yawning just ahead of him.
"And yet light enough from the moon came through these thick beech-trees to let you know Tom Grayson?"
"Yes."
"And you could see him shoot?"
"Yes."
"And you full twenty feet away?"
"Well, about that; nearly twenty, anyhow." Dave shifted his weight to his right foot.
"And you pretend to say to this court that by the moonlight that you got through the beech-trees in August you could even see that it was a pistol that Tom had?"
"Ye-es." Dave now stood on his left foot.
"And you could see what kind of a pistol it was?" This was said with a little laugh very exasperating to the witness.
"Yes, I could," answered Dave, with dogged resolution not to be faced down.
"And just how the barrel was hung to the stock?" There was a positive sneer in Lincoln's voice now.
"Yes." This was spoken feebly.
"And you twenty feet or more away?"
"I've got awful good eyes, an' I know what I see," whined the witness, apologetically.
Here Lincoln paused and looked at Sovine, whose extreme distress was only made the more apparent by his feeble endeavor to conceal his agitation. The counsel, after regarding his uneasy victim for a quarter of a minute, thrust his hand into the tail-pocket of his blue coat, and after a little needless fumbling drew forth a small pamphlet in green covers. He turned the leaves of this with extreme deliberation, while the court-room was utterly silent. The members of the bar had as by general consent put their chairs down on all-fours, and were intently watching the struggle between the counsel and the witness. The sallow-faced judge had stopped the scratching of his quill, and had lowered his spectacles on his nose, that he might study the distressed face of the tormented Sovine. Mrs. Grayson's hands were on her lap, palms downward; her eyes were fixed on Abra'm, and her mouth was half open, as though she were going to speak.
Barbara found it hard to keep her seat, she was so eager for Lincoln to go on, and Tom was leaning forward breathlessly in the dock; his throat felt dry, and he choked when he tried to swallow; it seemed to him that he would smother with the beating of his heart. But it was worth while to turn away from these more interested parties to look for a moment at the ruddy face of Bob McCord, which was puckered to a kind of focus with an expression that was customary with him in a moment of supreme interest, as when he was drawing a sure bead on a bear or deer. It was worth while to regard Rachel Albaugh, who had lifted the veil from her face radiant with interest. Lincoln appeared to be the only perfectly deliberate person in the room. He seemed disposed to protract the situation as long as possible. He held his victim on the rack and he let him suffer. He would turn a leaf or two in his pamphlet and then look up at the demoralized witness, as though to fathom the depth of his torture and to measure the result. At last he fixed his thumb firmly at a certain place on a page and turned his eyes to the judge.
"Now, your Honor," he said to the court, "this witness," with a half-contemptuous gesture of his awkward left hand toward Sovine, "has sworn over and over that he recognized the accused as the person who shot George Lockwood, near the Union camp-meeting on the night of the 9th of last August, and that he, the witness, was standing at the time twenty feet or more away, while the scene of the shooting was nearly a mile distant from the torches inside the circle of tents. So remarkably sharp are this witness's eyes that he even saw what kind of pistol the prisoner held in his hands, and how the barrel was hung to the stock, and he is able to identify this pistol of Grayson's as precisely like and probably the identical weapon." Here Lincoln paused and scrutinized Sovine. "All these details he saw and observed in the brief space of time preceding the fatal shot,—saw and observed them at 10 o'clock at night, by means of moonlight shining through the trees—beech-trees in full leaf. That is a pretty hard story. How much light does even a full moon shed in a beech woods like that on the Union camp-ground? Not enough to see your way by, as everybody knows who has had to stumble through such woods." Lincoln paused here, that the words he had spoken might have time to produce their due effect on the judge, and especially on the slower wits of some of the jury. Meanwhile he turned the leaves of his pamphlet. Then he began once more: "But, may it please the court, before proceeding with the witness I would like to have the jury look at the almanac which I hold in my hand. They will here see that on the night of the 9th of last August, when this extraordinary witness"—with a sneer at Dave, who had sunk down on a chair in exhaustion—"saw the shape of a pistol at twenty feet away, at 10 o'clock, by moonlight, the moon did not rise until half-past 1 in the morning."
Sovine had been gasping like a fish newly taken from the water while Lincoln uttered these words, and he now began to mutter something.
"You may have a chance to explain when the jury get done looking at the almanac," said the lawyer to him. "For the present you'd better keep silence."
There was a rustle of excitement in the court-room, but at a word from the judge the sheriff's gavel fell and all was still. Lincoln walked slowly toward the jury-box and gave the almanac to the foreman, an intelligent farmer. Countrymen in that day were used to consulting almanacs, and one group after another of the jurymen satisfied themselves that on the night of the 9th, that is, on the morning of the 10th, the moon came up at half-past 1 o'clock. When all had examined the page, the counsel recovered his little book.
"Will you let me look at it?" asked the judge.
"Certainly, your Honor"; and the little witness was handed up to the judge, who with habitual caution looked it all over, outside and in, even examining the title-page to make sure that the book was genuine and belonged to the current year. Then he took note on a slip of paper of the moon's rising on the night of August 9 and 10, and handed back the almanac to Lincoln, who slowly laid it face downward on the table in front of him, open at the place of its testimony. The audience in the court-room was utterly silent and expectant. The prosecuting attorney got half-way to his feet to object to Lincoln's course, but he thought better of it and sat down again.
"Now, may it please the court," Lincoln went on, "I wish at this point to make a motion. I think the court will not regard it as out of order, as the case is very exceptional—a matter of life and death. This witness has solemnly sworn to a story that has manifestly not one word of truth in it. It is one unbroken falsehood. In order to take away the life of an innocent man he has invented this atrocious web of lies, to the falsity of which the very heavens above bear witness, as this almanac shows you. Now why does David Sovine go to all this trouble to perjure himself? Why does he wish to swear away the life of that young man who never did him any harm?" Lincoln stood still a moment, and looked at the witness, who had grown ghastly pale about the lips. Then he went on, very slowly. "Because that witness shot and killed George Lockwood himself. I move your Honor, that David Sovine be arrested at once for murder."
These words, spoken with extreme deliberation and careful emphasis, shook the audience like an explosion.
The prosecutor got to his feet, probably to suggest that the motion was not in order, since he had yet a right to a re-direct examination of Sovine, but, as the attorney for the State, his duty was now a divided one as regarded two men charged with the same crime. So he waved his hand irresolutely, stammered inarticulately, and sat down.
"This is at least a case of extraordinary perjury," said the judge. "Sheriff, arrest David Sovine! This matter will have to be looked into."
The sheriff came down from his seat, and went up to the now stunned and bewildered Sovine.
"I arrest you," he said, taking him by the arm.
The day-and-night fear of detection in which Dave had lived for all these weeks had wrecked his self-control at last.
"God!" he muttered, dropping his head with a sort of shudder. "'T ain't any use keepin' it back any longer. I—didn't mean to shoot him, an' I would n't 'a' come here ag'inst Tom if I could 'a' got away."
The words appeared to be wrung from him by some internal agony too strong for him to master; they were the involuntary result of the breaking down of his forces under prolonged suffering and terror, culminating in the slow torture inflicted by his cross-examination. A minute later, when his spasm of irresolution had passed off, he would have retracted his confession if he could. But the sheriff's deputy, with the assistance of a constable, was already leading him through the swaying crowd in the aisle, while many people got up and stood on the benches to watch the exit of the new prisoner. When at length Sovine had disappeared out of the door the spectators turned and looked at Tom, sitting yet in the dock, but with the certainty of speedy release before him. The whole result of Lincoln's masterful stroke was now for the first time realized, and the excitement bade fair to break over bounds. McCord doubled himself up once or twice in the effort to repress his feelings out of respect for the court, but his emotions were too much for him; his big fist, grasping his ragged hat, appeared above his head.
"Goshamity! Hooray!" he burst out with a stentorian voice, stamping his foot as he waved his hat.
At this the whole court-roomful of people burst into cheers, laughter, cries, and waving of hats and handkerchiefs, in spite of the sheriff's sharp rapping and shouts of "Order in court!" And when at length the people were quieted a little, Mrs. Grayson spoke up, with a choking voice:
"Jedge, ain't you a-goin' to let him go now?"
There was a new movement of feeling, and the judge called out, "Sheriff, order in court!" But his voice was husky and tremulous. He took off his spectacles to wipe them, and he looked out of the window behind him, and put his handkerchief first to one eye, then to the other, before he put his glasses back.
"May it please the court," said the tall lawyer, who had remained standing, waiting for the tempest to subside, and who now spoke in a subdued voice, "I move your Honor, that the jury be instructed to render a verdict of 'Not guilty.'" The judge turned to the prosecuting attorney.
"I don't think, your Honor," stammered Allen, "that I ought to object to the motion of my learned brother, under the peculiar circumstances of this case."
"I don't think you ought," said the judge, promptly, and he proceeded to give the jury instructions to render the desired verdict. As soon as the jury, nothing loath, had gone through the formality of a verdict, the sheriff came and opened the door of the box to allow Tom to come out.
"O Tom! they are letting you out," cried Janet, running forward to meet him as he came from the dock. She had not quite understood the drift of these last proceedings until this moment.
This greeting by little Janet induced another burst of excitement. It was no longer of any use for the judge to keep on saying "Sheriff, command order in court!" All the sheriff's rapping was in vain; it was impossible to arrest and fine everybody. The judge was compelled to avail himself of the only means of saving the court's dignity by adjourning for the day, while Mrs. Grayson was already embracing her Tommy under his very eyes.
As for Barbara, overcome by the reaction of feeling, she sat still in passive happiness which she did not care to show to this crowd, whose late unfriendly manifestations toward Tom she could not yet quite forgive. Hardly conscious of what was passing around her, she did not observe that her mother had presently let go her hold on Tom, and that Tom had come near and was standing in front of her. Her natural reserve made her wish to avoid a scene in public, but there are times when natural reserve is not a sufficient barrier. Tom gently put his hand on her shoulder and said "Barb," then all sense of the presence of others was obliterated in an instant. The only fact that she took note of was that her brother was there before her with unmanacled hands, free to go where he listed and forever delivered from the danger that had hung over him so imminently. Of what she did you must not expect a description; embraces and kisses of joy would seem hysterical if set down here in black and white for readers of our time, who like the color washed out of a human passion before it is offered to them. No! no! let us turn away—we do not like such things. But those hearty Illinois folk who looked on that scene between Barbara and Tom, and whose quick sympathies made them part of it, did not feel the slightest disapproval when they saw the faithful sister put her arms about Tom's neck; and every one of her kisses they seconded with clapping of hands and cheers, and some of the people were even foolish enough to weep for sympathy.
The lawyers presently congratulated Lincoln, Barbara tried to thank him, and Judge Watkins felt that Impartial Justice herself, as represented in his own person, could afford to praise the young man for his conduct of the case.
"Abr'am," said Mrs. Grayson, "d' yeh know I kind uv lost confidence in you when you sot there so long without doin' anything." Then, after a moment of pause: "Abr'am, I'm thinkin' I'd ort to deed you my farm. You've 'arned it, my son; the good Lord A'mighty knows you have."
"I'll never take one cent, Aunt Marthy—not a single red cent"; and the lawyer turned away to grasp Tom's hand. But the poor fellow who had so recently felt the halter about his neck could not yet speak his gratitude. "Tom here," said Lincoln, "will be a help in your old days, Aunt Marthy, and then I'll be paid a hundred times. You see it'll tickle me to think that when you talk about this you'll say: 'That's the same Abe Lincoln that I used to knit stockings for when he was a poor little fellow, with his bare toes sticking out of ragged shoes in the snow.'"
Mrs. Grayson tried to say something more, but she could not.
Tom got his speech at length, when he saw the gigantesque form and big laughing red face of Bob McCord approaching him.
"Bob!" he said, "you dear old Bob! God A'mighty bless you, old fellow."
"I'm that tickled," said Bob, rocking to and fro with amusement. "Tom, you'd orto 'a' seed Jake Hogan's face. I watched it closte. Go to thunder! How it did git mixed about the time you wuz let out! I'm a-goin' to find 'im un see how he feels agin this time"; and Bob let go of Tom's hand and moved off through the crowd to look for Jake.
Tom took mechanically all the congratulations offered to him. Rachel came with the rest; there were some traces of tears about her long lashes as she beamed on Tom the full effulgence of her beauty and friendliness. Tom gave a little start when he saw her; then he took her hand, as he did that of the others, in a half-unconscious way. He was everybody's hero in the reaction of feeling, but he had been so near to the gallows within an hour that he had difficulty yet in appreciating the change.
"You'll come back into the office again, won't you, Tom?" said Blackman, in a spurt of good feeling.
"I don't know, Mr. Blackman. I must go home and rest, and be sure I'm alive, before I know what I shall do."
Tom's uncle had been utterly surprised by the turn affairs had taken, for he had never really doubted Tom's guilt. Now he was, for the first time, almost effusive; he gave himself credit that he had stood by his nephew.
"We'd like to have you back, Tom," he said; "and you'd be a general favorite now."
"I want to go home first, Uncle Tom, and get the place out of debt, so mother and Barb'll be easy in their minds. Then I don't know what I shall do. I don't feel as if I could ever come to town again without fetching mother with me. But I can't tell; I want to get out of this town; I hate the very sight of it. Come, Barb; do let's get off. Where's the horse? I want to get home, where I won't see any more of this crowd, and where I can be alone with you and mother."
Before they had made their way to the front door of the court-house the multitude outside had got firm hold of the fact of Tom's acquittal and the manner of it, and when he appeared they set up a shout; then there were cheers and more cheers. But Tom only looked worried, and sought to extricate himself from the people who followed him. At length he managed to get away from the last of them.
"You haven't ate anything to-day," said Janet, who clung to his hand and danced along by his side. "Come to our house to supper. I expect we'll have warm biscuits and honey."
"You dear little body!" said Tom. "I can't stop for supper to-night, Janet; I must go home with mother. I want to get out of the ugly town. I'll come and see you sometimes, and I'll have you out at the farm lots of times." He stopped to put his pale, trembling hand under her pretty chin; he turned her face up to his, he stooped and kissed her. But no entreaty could prevail on him to delay his departure. Not even the biscuits and honey on which Janet insisted. Hiram Mason helped him to hitch up old Blaze-face to the wagon. Then Tom turned to Hiram and grasped both his arms.
"You're going with us," he said abruptly.
"Not to-night, Tom. I'll come in a few days, when I've finished my writing in the clerk's office. I'll stop on my way home."
"I want to thank you, but I can't; confound it," said Tom.
"Never mind, Tom; I'm almost happier than you are."
"I'm not exactly happy, Mason," said Tom; "I've got that plaguey feeling of a rope around my neck yet. I can't get rid of it here in Moscow. Maybe out at the farm I shall be able to shake it off. Janet, won't you run into the house and tell mother and Barbara to come out quick—I want to get away."
Tom had expected that Bob McCord would take a place in the wagon, but Bob was not so modest as to forego a public triumph. He first went and recovered the wagon-spoke from beneath the court-house steps, where he had hidden it the night before. This he put into the baggy part of his "wamus," or hunting-jacket—the part above the belt into which he had often thrust prairie-chickens when he had no game-bag. Then he contrived to encounter Jake Hogan in the very thick of the crowd.
"O Jake!" he called, "what's the price uh rope? How's the hangin' business a-gittin' along these days? Doin' well at it, ain't yeh?"
"Wha' joo mean?" asked Jake, as he half turned about and regarded Bob with big eyes.
"Seems like's ef you'd ort to be'n ole han' by this time, Jake. You sot the time fer Tom's funeral three deffer'nt nights: wunst you wuz a-goin' to have it over't Perrysburg, un wunst the Sunday night that Pete Markham throwed you off the track weth that air yarn about a wall-eyed man weth red whiskers, un wunst ag'in las' night. Ev'ry time you sot it they wuz some sort uv a hitch; it didn't seem to come off rightly. S'pose un you try yer hand on Dave Sovine awhile. They's luck in a change."
"I hain't had no han' in no hangin's nor nuthin' uh that sort," snarled Jake.
"You hain't? Jest you go un tell that out on Broad Run, sonny. Looky h-yer, Jake. I've got the evidence agin you, un ef you dare me I'll go afore the gran' jury weth it. I jest dare you to dare me, ef you dare."
But Jake did not dare to dare him. He only moved slowly away toward his horse, the excited crowd surging after him, to his disgust.
"Looky h-yer, Jake," Bob went on, following his retreat. "I want to gin you some advice as a well-wishin' friend un feller-citizen. Barb'ry knowed your v'ice las' night, un Barb'ry Grayson hain't the sort uv a gal to stan' the sort uv foolin' 't you've been a-doin' about Tom."
"Aw, you shet up yer jaw, now wonchoo?" said Jake.
"I say, Jake," said McCord, still pursuing the crest-fallen leader of Broad Run, while the crowd moved about Big Bob as a storm center. "I say there, Jake; liker 'n not Barb'ry'll stay in town to-night un go afore the gran' jury to-morry. Now ef I wuz you I'd cl'ar the county this very identical night. Your ornery lantern-jawed face wouldn' look half's han'some as Tom's in that air box in front uv the sher'f."
"You shet up!" said Jake.
"Come un shet me up, wonch you?" said Bob, rubbing his hands and laughing.
Jake had reached his horse now, and without another word he mounted and rode away. But Bob kept walking about with his fists in his pockets, his big elbows protruding, and his face radiant with mischief until Sheriff Plunkett came out of the court-house.
"I say, Sher'f," he called, "how many men'd you say they wuz in that air fust mob?"
"Nigh onto forty, I should think," said Plunkett; "but of course I can't just exactly say." And he walked away, not liking to be catechised. There was something mysterious about that mob, and he was afraid there might be something that would count in the next election.
"They had pistols, didn't they?" Bob continued, following him.
"Yes, to be sure," said Plunkett, pausing irresolutely.
"Now looky h-yer, Sher'f; I know sumpin about that air mob. They wuzn't but jest on'y two men in the whole thing. I don't say who they wuz"; and here Bob looked about on the crowd, which showed unmistakable signs of its relish for this revelation.
"Un as fer pistols, they did have 'em. I've got one of 'em h-yer." Bob here pulled the wagon-spoke from the depths of his hunting-shirt. "That's one of the identical hoss-pistols that wuz p'inted at your head las' night. Felt kind-uh cold un creepy like, didn't it now, Hank Plunkett, when its muzzle was agin yer head, un it cocked, besides? Ha-a! ha!"
The crowd jeered and joined in Bob's wild merriment.
"I'll have you arrested," said the sheriff severely. "You've confessed enough now to make the grand jury indict you."
"Fer what? Fer savin' the life uv a innercent man? That'd be a purty howdy-do, now wouldn't it? Un it would be a lovely story to tell at my trial, that the sher'f uv this yere county gin up his keys to two men, two lonesome men weth on'y wagon-spokes! He-e! An' the wagon-spokes cocked! A wagon-spoke's a mighty bad thing when it does go off, especially ef it's loadened with buckshot."
Plunkett came close to McCord, and said in an undertone loud enough to be heard by others: "Ah, Bob, I knowed it wuz your voice, un I knowed your grip. They ain't any other man in this county that can put me down the way you did las' night. But don't you tell Jake ur any of his crowd about it"; and he winked knowingly at Bob.
"Aw, go to thunder, now!" said Bob, speaking loudly and not to be cajoled into giving up his fun. "Sher'f, you can't come no gum games on me. By jeementley crickets, you wuz skeered, un that's all they is about it. You wilted so 't I wuz afeerd you'd clean faint away afore I could git out uv yeh where the keys wuz. Why didn't you hide Tom summers? You wuz afeerd Broad Run'd vote agin you, un you as good as tole Jake Hogan ut you wouldn' make no trouble when he come to lynch Tom."
"No, I didn't; I didn't have anything to say to Jake."
"Ef you take my case afore the gran' jury un I'm tried, I'll prove it on yeh. Now, Hank Plunkett, they's two things that'll never happen." Here Bob smote his right fist into his left palm. "One is 't you'll ever fetch my case afore the gran' jury. That's as shore's you're born. T' other is that you'll ever be elected ag'in! Wha'd joo turn off Pete Markham fer? Fer tryin' to save Tom, un to please Broad Run. Now you're come up weth, ole hoss. Markham'll be the nex' sher'f. You jest cut a notch in a stick to remember't Big Bob McCord tole you so. Ef 't hadn' been fer me 'n' Abe Lincoln you 'n' Jake, 'twext and 'tween yeh, 'd 'a' hung the wrong feller. Now I jest want to see you fetch me afore the court wunst. Ef you pester me too much, I'm derned 'f I don't go thar on m' own hook."
"You've been drinking, Bob," said Plunkett, as he hurried away; but the people evidently sided with McCord, whose exploit of mobbing the sheriff almost single-handed had made him more than ever the champion of the county.
That night Jake Hogan, afraid of arrest, succeeded in trading his cabin, with the front door still unhinged, and his little patch of rugged ground for a one-horse wagon and some provisions. Over the wagon he stretched his only two bed-sheets of unbleached domestic for covering. Before noon the next day, he had passed safely out of the county. The raw-boned horse, the rickety wagon, the impoverished and unwilling cow tied behind, the two yellow mongrel pups between the wagon-wheels, and the frowsy-headed wife alongside of him were token enough to every experienced eye that here was a poor whitey on his travels. To all inquiries regarding his destination, Jake returned:
"I'm boun' fer Messouri. Yeh see they hain't no kind of a chance fer a poor man in this yer daudrautted Eelinoys country."
Once an example of migration had been set, his neighbors grew restless also, and in a year or two nearly all of them had obeyed their hereditary instinct and followed him to Pike County in Missouri. The most of the Broad Run neighborhood is now included in a great grazing farm; here a few logs, there some tumble-down ruins of a stick-chimney, and in another place a rough stone hearth, only remain to indicate the resting-place for a few years of a half-nomadic clan, whose members or their descendants are by this time engaged, probably, in helping to rid the Pacific coast of its unchristian Chinese.
Dave Sovine's partial confession, which had served to acquit Tom, was sufficient at the next term of the court to condemn him, for no plea of accidental shooting could save him after he had tried to escape at the expense of another man's life. During his trial the motive for shooting Lockwood remained an inexplicable mystery. But when once Dave was convinced that his execution was inevitable and there was an end to all the delights of deviltry, he proceeded to play the only card remaining in his hand, and to euchre Justice on her own deal. Like other murderers of his kind he became religious, and nothing could be more encouraging to criminals than the clearness and fervor of his religious experience, and his absolute certainty of the rewards of paradise. His superiority in wickedness had made him the hero of all the green goslings of the village; his tardy conversion and shining professions made him an object of philanthropic interest to sentimental people and gave him the consolations of conspicuity to the last.
It was during this lurid sunset period of his unnecessary existence that Dave made confessions. These were not always consistent one with another; the capacity for simple and direct truth-telling is a talent denied to men of Sovine's stamp, nor can it be developed in a brief season of penitence. It is quite probable that Sovine failed to state the exact truth even when narrating his religious experiences. But by a comparison of his stories, with some elimination of contradictory elements, the main facts regarding the death of George Lockwood were made out with passable clearness. Being of a thrifty turn of mind, Lockwood had, by a series of careful observations, detected one of the principal tricks employed by Dave to win the money of the unwary. It had been Lockwood's purpose to play the trick back on Dave at some favorable opportunity, but this he found quite impossible. To bring himself to Dave's proficiency in manipulation no end of assiduous practice would be needful. There remained one other way in which he might utilize his discovery. It was an established rule in that part of the country that he who detected his opponent in the very act of cheating at cards might carry off the stakes.
When Lockwood went to the camp-meeting he put into his pocket a bit of candle, in order to have a game with Dave; and when on encountering him Dave proposed the game, the two went out into the woods, remote from the meeting, Lockwood lighted his candle and they sat down on a log to play. Lockwood won at first and doubled the stakes at every game, until Dave, seeing that his pocket-money was running short, and the candle fast wasting in the breezes, concluded to sweep in the stakes with his favorite trick. George Lockwood exposed the cheat at the very instant, and put the stakes in his pocket. But Dave had received his education in its higher branches in the South-west of half a century ago, and he had no notion of suffering himself to be bankrupted so easily. He drew his pistol and demanded the stakes, following Lockwood with reiterated threats, until, in a moment of exasperation, he shot him. A crowd came quickly at the sound of the pistol, and Dave had the shrewdness not to run away and not to attempt to take any money from George Lockwood's person. Remembering Tom Grayson's threats, he declared, with his usual alertness in mendacity, that he had seen Grayson do the shooting, and thus diverted attention from himself.
He had no further thought at the time than to get out of a present difficulty; it was his purpose to leave the country before the trial should come on. But he found himself watched, and he imagined that he was suspected. He saw no chance to move without making sure of his own arrest; he became alarmed and unfitted for decision by the sense of his peril; as the trial approached, his nerves, shaken by dissipations, were unstrung by the debate within him. He saw ghosts at night and his sleep almost entirely forsook him. This horror of a doom that seemed perpetually to hang over him was greatly enhanced by the cross-examination to which he was subjected; from the first he misdoubted that Lincoln had penetrated his whole secret and possessed the means of making it known. And when he heard himself charged publicly with the murder and as publicly arrested, he believed that some evidence against him had been found; he did not draw the line between the charge and the proof, and the half confession escaped him in the first breakdown produced by sudden despair.
But at the last he spoke edifyingly from the scaffold, and died with as much composure and more self-complacency than Tom would have shown had he fallen a victim to Dave's rascality. What becomes of such men in another world is none of my business. But I am rather pleased to have them depart, be it to paradise, or purgatory, or limbo, or any other compartment of the world of spirits. In some moods I could even wish them a prosperous voyage to the Gehenna of our forefathers, now somewhat obsolescent, if only they would begone and cease to vex this rogue-ridden little world of ours.
When Tom rode home from the trial with his mother and Barbara, his emotions were not just what one might expect; the events of the day and the tremendous strain on his nerves had benumbed him. He was only conscious that it gave him a great pleasure to leave the village behind, and to get once more upon the open prairie, which was glorified by the tints and shadows of the setting sun. The fields of maize, with their tassels growing brown and already too ripe and stiff to wave freely, and with their long blades becoming harsh and dry, so that the summer rustle had changed to a characteristic autumnal rattling, seemed to greet him like old friends who had visibly aged in his absence. Tom found his mind, from sheer strain and weariness, fixing itself on unimportant things; he noted that the corn-silk which protruded from the shucks was black, and that the shucks themselves were taking on that sear look which is the sure token of the ripeness of the ear within the envelope. Now and then he marked an ear that had grown so long as to push its nose of cob quite beyond the envelope. The stretches of prairie grass showed a mixture of green and brown; the September rains had freshened a part of the herbage, giving it a new verdure, but the riper stalks and blades had maintained their neutral colors. These things interested Tom in a general way, as marking the peaceful changes that had taken place in the familiar face of nature during his period of incarceration. What he felt in regarding these trifles was simply that he was alive and once more free to go where he pleased. He said little, and replied to the remarks of his mother and Barbara briefly, and he drove old Blaze-face at a speed quite unbecoming a horse at his time of life. The people whom he passed cheered him, or called out their well-meant congratulation, or their bitter remarks about Dave Sovine, but Tom on his part was not demonstrative; he even drove past Rachel Albaugh and her brother Ike with only a nod of recognition. To any remark of his mother and Barbara about Dave's villainy, and to any allusion to the case, he returned the briefest answers, giving the impression that he wished to get mentally as well as physically away from the subject. When he got home he asked for an old-fashioned country hoe-cake for supper, and he would have the table set out on the kitchen porch; he said it seemed so delightful to be permitted to go out-of-doors again. After supper he turned old Blaze into the pasture, with a notion that he too might prefer his liberty.
In reflecting on the events of the day, Barbara remembered with pleasure that Rachel had congratulated Tom. It made his vindication complete that the young woman who had refused his attentions when he was accused of nothing worse than foolish gambling had now taken pains to show her good-will in public. But when the question of a possible renewal of the relations between Tom and his old sweetheart came up in Barbara's mind, there was always a doubt. Not that there was anything objectionable about Rachel Albaugh. Barbara said to her mother over and over again, in the days that followed Tom's acquittal, that there was nothing against Rachel. If Rachel was not very industrious she was certainly "easy-tempered." In her favor it could be said that she had a beautiful face, and that she would be joint heiress with her brother to a large and well-improved prairie farm, to say nothing of her father's tract of timber-land.
After a while Barbara came to wish that Tom's old affection for Rachel might be kindled again. She did not like to see him so changed. He plodded incessantly at farm work, and he seemed to have lost his relish for society. If any one came to the house, he managed to have business abroad. He was not precisely gloomy, but the change in him was so marked that it made his sister unhappy.
"Why don't you go to see Rachel?" she asked, a week after the trial. Barbara was straining her eyes down the road, as she often did in those days. "Rachel would be glad to see you again, Tom, like as not."
"Maybe she would," answered Tom, as he picked up the pail and started to the spring for water by way of cutting off all further talk on the question.
The days went by without Tom's showing by any sign that he cared to see Rachel, and to Barbara's grief the days went by without Hiram Mason's promised arrival at the Graysons'. But there came presently a note from Hiram to Barbara, saying that he had been detained by the necessity he was under of finishing Magill's writing, and by the difficulty he found in getting his pay from the easy-going clerk for what he had done. But he hoped to stop on his way home in three or four days. This note was brought from Moscow by Bob McCord, who also brought Janet. The child had teased her father into letting her come out in Aunt Martha's wagon with Bob, whom she had seen driving past the house on his way in.
Janet spent her time in the country wholly with Tom. She followed him afield, she climbed with him into the barn lofts, she sat on the back of old Blaze when Tom led him to water, she went into the forest when Tom went to fell trees for fire-wood, she helped him to pick apples, and she was as happy in all this as she would have been in the Elysian Fields.
"Cousin Tom," she said, the day after her arrival, as she leaned out of the high, open window of the hay-loft, "yonder's a lady getting down on the horse-block at the house."
Tom climbed up from the threshing-floor to the mow, and, standing well back out of sight in the gloom of the loft, he recognized Rachel Albaugh's horse. Then he went back again to his wheat-fanning on the threshing-floor.
"Aren't you going to go and help her?" said Janet, when Tom stopped the noisy fanning-mill to shovel back the wheat and to rake away the cheat.
"Pshaw!" said Tom. "A country girl doesn't need any help to get off a horse."
Rachel had come to call on Barbara, nor did she admit to herself that her visit had anything to do with Tom. But she found herself in an attitude to which she was unaccustomed. From the moment that Tom had been charged with murder her liking for him increased. The question of his guilt or innocence did not disturb her—except in so far as it jeoparded his life; he was at least a dashing fellow, out of the common run. And now that he had been acquitted, and was a hero of everybody, Rachel found in herself a passion that was greater than her vanity, and that overmastered even her prudence. She was tormented by her thoughts of Tom in the day, she dreamed of him at night. Tom would not come to her, and she felt herself at length drawn by a force she could not resist to go to him.
Barbara asked Rachel to stay to dinner, and promised that Tom would put away her horse as soon as he knew that she had come. This was but the common hospitality of the country, but Barbara hoped that Rachel's presence might evoke Tom's old buoyant self again. And so, while Barbara sat on the loom-bench weaving a web of striped linsey, Rachel sat near her, knitting. It appeared to Barbara that Rachel had undergone almost as great a change as Tom. She had lost her taciturnity. Her tongue kept pace with the click of her needles. She only broke the thread of her talk when she paused to take the end of one needle out of the quill of her knitting-case and put another in. Under color of sympathy for the Graysons in their troubles she talked of what was in her mind. How dreadful it must have been for Tom to be in jail! How anxious he must have been at the trial! How well he bore up under it all! How proud he must have been when he was acquitted! These and such remarks were web and woof of her talk, while Barbara was throwing her nimble shuttle to and fro and driving the threads home with the double-beat of her loom-comb.
By half-past 11 the early farm dinner was almost ready, and Mrs. Grayson blew a blast on the tin horn which hung outside of the door, to let Tom and Janet know that they were to come in.
When Tom heard the horn he went and led Rachel's horse to the stable, after perching Janet in the saddle; and then he delayed long enough to shuck out and give him eight or ten ears of corn. After this he came to the house and washed his hands and face in the country way, with much splash and spatter, in a basin that sat on a bench outside of the door, and Janet washed hers, imitating to the best of her ability Tom's splattering way of dashing the water about. Then the two used the towel that hung on a roller in the kitchen porch, and Tom entered the kitchen with his clothes soiled by labor and with that look of healthful fatigue which comes of plentiful exercise in the open air.
"Howdy, Rachel? All well 't your house?" This was the almost invariable formula of country politeness, and it was accompanied by a faint smile of welcome and a grasp of her hand.
"Howdy, Tom?" said Rachel, cordially. "I hope you are well." Rachel regarded him a moment, and then let her eyes droop. Had Rachel discovered that her face was at its best when her long eyelashes were lowered in this fashion, or was the action merely instinctive?
"Oh, so-so!" answered Tom, uneasily, as he seated himself with the rest at the table. Rachel sat next to him, and he treated her with hospitable politeness, but she looked in vain for any sign of his old affection. She hardly once fairly encountered his eye during the meal. He seemed more indifferent to her attractions than she had ever known any man, old or young, to be. And yet she knew that her charms had lost nothing of their completeness. That very morning she had gone into the rarely opened Albaugh parlor and examined herself in the largest looking-glass in the house—the one that hung between the parlor windows, and that had a print of Mount Vernon in the upper panel of the space inclosed between the turned frames. Her fresh and yet delicate complexion was without a speck or flaw, her large eyes were as lustrous as ever, and there was the same exquisite symmetry and harmony of features that had made her a vision of loveliness to so many men. But Tom seemed more interested in his cousin, whom he kept laughing with a little childish byplay while talking to his sister's guest. Rachel felt herself baffled, and by degrees, though treated cordially, she began to feel humiliated. When dinner was finished by a course of pumpkin pie and quince preserves served with cream, Tom pushed back his chair and explained that he was just going to begin building some rail pens to hold the corn when it should be gathered and shucked, and that he could not allow himself the usual noon-time rest. The days were getting so short, you know. Would Rachel excuse him? Barbara would blow the horn so that he could put the saddle on Rachel's horse when she wanted it. But wouldn't she stay to supper?
Rachel declined to stay to supper, and she was visibly less animated after dinner than she had been before. The conversation flagged on both sides; Barbara became preoccupied with her winding-blades, her bobbins, and her shuttle, while Rachel was absorbed in turning the heel of her stocking. By half-past 1 o'clock the guest felt bound to go home; the days were getting shorter and there was much to be done at home, she remembered. The horn was blown, and Tom led her horse out to the block and helped her to mount. As he held her stirrup for her to place her foot, it brought to his memory, with a rush, her refusal to let him ride home with her from the Timber Creek school-house after the "singing." When he looked up he saw that Rachel's mind had followed the same line of association; both of them colored at this manifest encounter of their thoughts.
"I suppose I oughtn't to have said 'no' that day at the school-house." Rachel spoke with feeling, moved more by the desperate desire she felt to draw Tom out than by any calculation in making the remark.
"Yes, you ought," said Tom. "I never blamed you."
Then there was an awkward pause.
"Good-bye, Tom," said Rachel, extending her hand. "Won't you come over and see us sometime?"