"Hang him!" cried Jake Hogan; and there were other cries that showed how swiftly and terribly the current was setting in the direction indicated by Jake. Tom Grayson was sworn. "Now," said the coroner, "you don't have to criminate yourself. If you cannot answer any question asked of you without criminating you, you can decline to give an answer." For how many ages have Anglo-Saxons made their criminal law ridiculous by this rule! "Now," the coroner went on, "tell us just what you know about the shooting at the camp-meeting." "I don't know anything at all about it," said Tom with agitation. "I haven't seen George Lockwood since I quarreled with him in Moscow till I saw him here." And he pointed with a trembling finger to the stark form of the man he had hated. "Lie!" cried Hogan. The coroner called, "Order!" "Aw!" said one of the women in the wheat-mow. "To think he could have the impedence to hole up his head an' talk that away un the corpse right there afore his eyes!" "Do you know that pistol?" asked the coroner. Tom took it up and looked at some marks on the butt of it. "It's mine," he said. "Did you have it at the camp-meeting?" "No, nor any other." "You are not obliged to criminate yourself," said the coroner again; "but didn't you see Lockwood killed?" "No," said Tom. "It's all a lie that Dave Sovine swore to, and he knows it. I wasn't on that part of the ground." "Hang him!" interjected Hogan. "The bah-y is awful plucky, upon me sowl," said Magill, who was standing on a plow-beam in order to see over the heads of the crowd. "It would be a pity to hang a man of such good stuff." "The bare-faced villain!" growled the man next to him, and the unfavorable impression evidently had sway with the crowd. When people have once made up their mind as to how a thing has happened, they do not like to have their fixed notions disturbed. Tom's heart sank; he could see that the chance for his getting back to the jail alive was growing smaller. Hiram Mason had attached himself to Tom and the sheriff, and had elbowed his way to the front in their wake; the people, supposing that he had some official function, made way for him. He now got the ear of the sheriff. "If you don't get Tom away at once he'll be lynched," he said. "I know it; but I don't know what to do," said Plunkett. "If I make any move, I'll fetch the crowd down on Tom." "Get him down into the cow-stable under the barn, and let Markham take him off. You stay here and they won't suspect that he's gone." There was something pitiable about the sheriff's inability to make a decision at a critical moment. He looked at the angry crowd, who were paying little attention to the testimony of unimportant witnesses, and he looked at the coroner. He didn't like to bear the responsibility of having a prisoner taken from his hands; still more he disliked to offend so many voters.