The ride seemed to Barbara almost interminable. If she could have left her half-distracted mother she would have got out of the wagon and run through the fields, in hope of finding Tom and knowing from him the whole truth, and making up her mind what was to be done. When at length the wagon reached the gate in front of the Grayson house, Bob McCord was in waiting. He had heard that a bear had been seen on Broad Run, and had left the camp-meeting early, intent on a departure before daylight in pursuit of that "varmint." He had known nothing of the shooting, but he told Barbara that, when he came near the Grayson house, he had seen Tom run across the road and into the house,—and that Tom came out again almost at once, and reached the gate in time to meet the sheriff and give himself up. The sheriff had dismounted one of the men with him, and putting Tom in the saddle they had gone toward Moscow on a gallop. Bob wasn't near enough to hear what Tom had said when the sheriff took him; but knowing that something must be wrong, he had waited for the return of the wagon.
It was some relief to the tension of Barbara's feelings to know that Tom was now in the hands of the lawful authorities and well on his way to Moscow, where he would be out of the reach of the angry crowd that was surging to and fro around the camp-meeting.
But there followed the long night of uncertainty. The mother sat moaning in her chair, only rousing herself enough now and then to assure some newly arrived neighbor that "poor Tom never done it." Barbara confided only to Mely McCord the very faint hope she entertained that Tom was not guilty. She couldn't believe that he would break his solemn promise, made that very evening. But in her secret heart she could not get over the fact that George Lockwood was lying in the woods stark and dead, and no one was so likely to have killed him as her impetuous brother.
About 1 o'clock, the dreadful monotony of the night was dreadfully broken by the arrival of the deputy-sheriff. He spoke in an unsympathetic, official voice, but in a manner externally respectful. He must search Tom's room; and so, taking a candle, he went to the room alone, and soon came back bringing an old-fashioned single-barrel, flint-lock pistol, of the kind in use in the early part of the century. It had belonged to Tom's father, and the officer had found it in one of the drawers in the room. Barbara sat down and shut her eyes as the deputy passed through the sitting-room with the weapon, but Mrs. Grayson called the officer to her.
"I say, Mister—I don't know your name. Let me speak to you."
"Yes, ma'am," said the man, "My name's Markham"; and he came and stood near her.
"Air you the son of Lijy Markham?" Mrs. Grayson always identified people by recalling their filiation, and she could not resist this genealogical tendency in her mind even in the hour of sorest trial.
"Yes," said the officer.
"Well, now, what I want to say is that Tommy didn't kill that man. I'm his mother, an' I had ought to know, an' I tell yeh so. You hadn't ought to 'a' took 'im up fer what he didn't do."
Markham was puzzled to know what to reply, but he answered presently: