"We find that George Lockwood came to his death by being shot with buckshot, fired from a pistol by Thomas Grayson, Junior, and we recommend that the said Thomas Grayson be committed to answer to the charge of murder."
When this formal condemnation had been read, the passions of the crowd broke over all bounds, and the words of the coroner, formally ordering the commitment of the prisoner, were not heard. Cries of "Hang him! Hang him to the first tree!" mingled with curses, broke forth. Men swung themselves down from the high beams and there was a rush from the mows, while the women among the wheat-sheaves drew back in terror as they might have done in a rising hurricane. The crowd surged hither and thither about the outside of the barn, and surrounded the sheriff and the coroner, demanding the prisoner. It was more than five minutes after the verdict was in before it was believed that Tom had been taken away, and then the mob were bewildered by the certainty that nobody had seen him taken down the Moscow road. Foiled in their purpose, they fell away, and the tide of passion began to ebb. But the more determined rallied about Hogan, and agreed to meet him at the Broad Run grocery after dark, to make arrangements for a trip to the county-seat during the night.
XVII
A COUNCIL OF WAR
As soon as Zeke had eaten the frugal supper of mush and milk that Mrs. Britton set out for him, he sought the dilapidated little Broad Run grocery. The building was of logs, and had a pair of deer's antlers over the door for a sign that it was in one sense a public house. The low door, with its threshold on the level of the ground, the one square, dingy little window, and the shabby stick chimney, in the chinks of which the clay plaster was cleaving, gave the place a run-down expression. In looking at the building, one got a notion that it would like to slink away if it could. Zeke found nobody in but the proprietor, a boozy-headed looking man, with his hands usually in his trousers' pockets, and his swollen eye-lids never wide open. The stock of groceries was small; two barrels of corn-whisky and one of molasses were the dominant elements; a quart cup and some glasses stood on a dirty unpainted poplar counter, beside a pair of scales. The whole interior had a harmonious air of sloth, stupidity, and malpropriety; and its compound odors were as characteristic as indescribable. Zeke waited about awhile, wondering that no one should have come to the rendezvous.
"Where's Jake Hogan?" he enquired of the "grocery-keeper."
"I dunno."
Zeke had anticipated this answer. The man never did know anything but the price of his liquors. It was the safest way for one who kept such a resort and heard so many confidences, and it was a way of answering questions that required the least exertion.
"But I wuz to meet him here."