"Tom, come out," he called.
Mason was barely acquainted with Tom, but he was shocked to see the fine-looking fellow in handcuffs as he came to the door, blinking his eyes at the light, and showing a face which wounded pride and anxiety had already begun to make haggard.
"Mr. Mason, I didn't expect to see you," said Tom. "Did you hear anything from mother and Barbara?"
"They're outside," said Mason. "I thought I'd just take your place at home for a few days."
The sheriff had gone along the hall to open the door leading into the room on the side opposite the dungeon. Tom regarded Mason a moment in silence, and presently said with emotion:
"How can I make anybody believe the truth? They'll say that a man who'd kill another would lie about it. I believe I should n't care so much about the danger of being hung, if I could only make a few people know that I did n't kill George Lockwood. I can't make you believe it, but I'm not guilty." As he said this, Tom dropped his eyes from Mason's face, and an expression of discouragement overspread his own.
"You certainly don't seem like a guilty man," said Hiram.
"The worst of it is," said Tom, as they followed the sheriff into the eastern room of the jail, "I can't think, to save my life, who 'twas that could have done the shooting. I don't know of any enemy that Lockwood had, unless you might have called me one. I hated him and talked like a fool about shooting, but I never seriously thought of such a thing."
The eastern room of the wretched little jail was about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long. In it were confined from time to time ordinary prisoners and occasionally lunatics, without separation on account of character or sex. Fortunately Tom had the jail now to himself.
The sheriff, who in those days was also the jailer, locked Mason and Tom in the eastern room while he opened the outside door and admitted Mrs. Grayson and Barbara to the hall. Then he locked the front door behind them and proceeded to unlock the door of the eastern room. Barbara ran in eagerly and threw her arms about Tom.