"Settle it with Markham and the coroner," he said, sneaking out of the decision he could not bring himself to make. "Mr. Markham," whispered Hiram, "the sheriff wants you and me to get Tom off. I'll get the horses ready, and you and Tom are to come out through the cow-stable. Speak to the coroner about it, and don't let the crowd see it. If we don't get him away before this thing breaks up he'll never get to town alive." "All right," said Markham. "I'll be in the cow-stable with Tom when you're ready." Jake Hogan had already gone out to muster his men, and Hiram was very impatient at the long time it took him to work his way outward. He was a little annoyed when Magill, getting down from the plow-beam, stopped him to whisper: "I say, you're Tom's friend. Now what can I do for the bah-y? I s'pose he's guilty, but I don't want to see such a bowld gintleman as he is lynched by such a set of howlin' blackguards as these." "Go over there and stand in front of Tom, so that the people won't see him and Markham when they get down into the cow-stable." Having whispered this between his teeth, Mason painfully worked his way out of the door, while Magill pushed forward toward the coroner. For Magill the people made way as best they could, supposing that the clerk was one of the functionaries without whom the performance could not proceed. The coroner had acceded to Markham's proposition and was contriving to protract the session. Magill called Sheriff Plunkett to him and made that worthy stand in unimportant conversation with him, so that they two covered from all observers first Markham's descent and then Tom's. The deputy sheriff and then his prisoner had to climb over a hay-rack and thence down to the ground. The cow-stable was beneath that end of the barn which jutted over a hill-side descending to a brook. As nothing was to be seen from this stable, there was nobody in it but a few boys. When Mason came to say that he was ready, Markham passed out with his prisoner and down the hill-side to the bed of the brook, where Mason had brought the deputy's horse and old Blaze. Tom had been brought to the inquest in a wagon; but as it was necessary to avoid the main road, Mason had unharnessed Blaze for Tom to ride. As the hoofs of the horses clattered down over the stones in the bed of the stream, Tom felt as a man might who had but just eluded the coils of a boa-constrictor. In a little while the two were galloping over the open prairie toward Moscow by by-roads.