Then Barbara's slight form pushed through the crowd, until her progress was arrested by a dense knot of eager inquirers that encompassed the man who had brought the news. It was quite impossible to get within twenty feet of him, or to hear anything he was saying; but bits of intelligence percolated through the layers of humanity that enveloped him. Barbara could only wait and listen. At last a man a little nearer the radiating center said in reply to the query of one who stood next to her: "It's George Lockwood, that clerks for Wooden & Snyder down 't Moscow, that is killed, but I can't find out who 't wuz done it." Barbara's heart stood still within her for a moment. Then dreading to hear more, she pushed out of the ever-increasing crowd and reached her mother. "Come, mother; we must get home quick." "What's the matter, Barb'ry? Who's killed?" asked Mely McCord. "I don't know anything, only we _must_ get home. Quick, mother!" she was impelled by instinct to save her mother as long as possible from the shock she felt impending. But it was of no use. "What's the matter, Sam; can you make out?" cried a man near her to one just emerging from the crowd about the messenger. "W'y, they say as Tom Grayson's shot an' killed a feller from Moscow, an' Tom's made off, an' can't be found. They's talk of lynchin' him." Mrs. Grayson's lips moved; she tried to speak, but in vain; the sudden blow had blanched her face and paralyzed her speech. It was pitiable to see her ineffectual effort to regain control of herself. At length she sank down on a shuck-bottom chair by the door of the tent. "Yer's some smellin'-salts," said a woman standing by, and she thrust forward her leathery hand holding an uncorked bottle of ammonia. "He didn't do it," murmured Mrs. Grayson, when she had revived a little. "Our Tommy wouldn't do sech a thing. Go up there,"--and she pointed to the pulpit,--"you go up there, Barb'ry, an' tell the folks 't our Tommy never done it." "Come, mother; let's go home," said Barbara faintly, for all her energy had gone now. "I'll go with you," said Mely. But Mrs. Grayson did not wish to go; she was intent on staying in order to tell the folks that Tommy "never, never done sech a thing." She yielded at length to the gentle compulsion of Barbara and Mely and the neighbors who gathered about, and got into the wagon. Mely, who knew every inch of the road, took the reins, and drove slowly toward the Grayson house, picking a way among the stumps, roots, and holes of the new road. XI FRIENDS IN THE NIGHT