"Well, say I believe it then, and let's proceed. Tell me all that happened between you and that young man."
Tom began where this story begins and told all about turning the Bible at Albaugh's; about the gambling in Wooden & Snyder's store and how he was led into it; about his visit to Hubbard Township to get money to pay Lockwood, and Rachel's revelation of Lockwood's treachery in telling Ike. Then he told of his anger and his threatening, his uncle's break with him, and his talk with Barbara the evening before the murder; and finally he gave a circumstantial account of all that happened to him on the camp-ground, and of his flight and arrest.
"But," said Lincoln, who had looked closely and sometimes incredulously at Tom's face while he spoke, "why did you take a pistol with you to the camp-meeting?"
"I did not. I hadn't had a pistol in my hands for a week before the shooting."
"But Plunkett says there's a man ready to swear that he saw you do the shooting. They've got a pistol out of one of your drawers, and this witness will swear that you used just such an old-fashioned weapon as that."
"Good Lord, Abe! who would tell such an infernal lie on a fellow in my fix? That makes my situation bad." And Tom got up and walked the stone-paved floor in excitement. "But the bullet will show that I didn't do it. Get hold of the bullet, and if it fits the bore of that old-fashioned pistol I won't ask you to defend me."
"But there wasn't any bullet." Lincoln was now watching Tom's countenance with the closest scrutiny.
"No bullet! How in creation did they kill him, then?"
"Can't you think?" He was still studying Tom's face.
"I don't know any way of killing a fellow with a pistol that's got no bullet unless you beat his brains out with the butt of it, and I thought they said George was shot."