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Half-a-dozen persons were hurrying through the street with flashlights, and they gave Abner the owl-like impression of having been up all night. Most of them were going to jail, one or two were coming back. One of the returning men explained the firing in a husky one-o'clock voice:

"The prisoners have broke out: Tim Fraley, Jim Sandage, a nigger named Rufus Beans. Bascom come out on 'em as they was jumpin' from his second story, an' Fraley knocked him in the head with a stick."

Abner's heart began to pound; Jim jumping from a second-story window—Bascom knocked in the head with a stick. . . . He ran on and presently met another man who explained it was Bascom's boy signalling for help with his father's gun. That's why the shots came so slowly.

Abner went running down the rocky lane toward the jail with men and flashlights gathering in from every direction. Ahead of him he could see lights in the jail yard and in the jail itself.

When Abner reached the yard, he found the spectators grouped about an uncurtained window through which the crowd could see a Doctor Agnew dressing a scalp wound on Bascom's head. The sheriff sat impatiently in his chair while the surgeon dabbled antiseptic solution on the wound and sewed it up. The doctor appeared to be arguing with the restless jailer.

The men around Abner were saying, "Bascom don't want to wait! He wants to go with the posse. He's mad as a hare, he's got to wait tull mornin'—kain't ketch nobody in the dark."

Other men were flashing their lights up at the broken bars of the window. There were exclamations and oaths at the height from which the prisoners had leaped. "Hell of a jolt!" "Looks like it would uh stove up their laigs!" "Has anybody 'phoned to Florence fer the dawgs?"

Just then a hand touched Abner's shoulder and a voice said, "There are two men in the crowd who don't care if he does get away, eh, Mr. Teeftallow?"