Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/35

The Undoing of Dinney Crockett To his lifelong shame, Dinney broke down and bawled like any baby in arms.

The childless mother covered her eyes with her handkerchief and wept silently. The man called George walked nervously up and down the room, and then looked absently out over the fields of ripening wheat, golden in the sunlight of the late afternoon.

There was silence for several minutes, and then the man said, and it seemed almost resignedly:

"Very well, Dinney, if you really want to, I'll take you back to the city with me in the morning."

Could it have been a sob that choked his voice? Dinney neither knew nor cared. He wiped his eyes and seemed to smell once more the smell of the crowded city street, and to hear the music of a thousand hurrying wheels. 23