Page:Teeftallow-1926.djvu/404

Abner looked around. It was Sim Pratt addressing him.

"Jim didn't hit the sheriff," said Abner.

"No—I'm sorry anybody hit him. He was doin' his duty."

The thought of the bloodhounds after his foster-father revisioned for Abner the tragedy of Peck Bradley, and it filled the youth with terror. The notion of Jim being chased through the hills and swamps in this bitter weather was horrible.

Pratt was at his side again saying angrily, "Sandage was as innocent as you or I—tricked into it—Jones can talk a man into believin' white's black. . . ."

At that moment a voice in the crowd called above the babble, "Look yonder at that light!"

Everyone looked and other voices took up the cry.

"Ain't that the courthouse?"

"God'lmighty, is the courthouse afar?"

Across the night came the clangour of a distant bell. Faraway voices shouted with urgency in their faintly heard tones. Above the tops of the intervening trees, Abner could now see the dull umber of an illuminated smoke column. It was the only clearly visible thing in the encircling darkness.

By this time the excitement which a fire always creates in a village seized the crowd. The whole posse rushed pell-mell out of the jail yard and went streaming up the stony square toward the courthouse square. As they neared the square the tips of the flames underneath the rolling smoke seemed to be licking straight out of the tops of the water oaks in the courtyard. The running men panted and cursed as they stumbled through the boulders in the lane. The whole thoroughfare winked with flashlights and lanterns. Voices were crying, "It's the courthouse! Our courthouse is gone!"

Another man puffed out, "By God, that's no bad trick. I don't guess any posse'll chase him when they put the fire out."

"Yes, an' the dawgs kain't trail him amongst so many tracks!"

Just at this juncture Abner burst out of the lane into the