Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/292

 to be fewer, and she could see they were now following streets that were both quiet and unkempt. And she concluded that for the time at least all resistance was useless.

She warned herself to be calm and keep her wits about her. It was no longer the fleeting physical terror at being physically overpowered that possessed her. It was more a great and all-consuming indignation at the treatment to which she had been subjected. She could know sustained fear no more than could the homeless feline that has adventured through the thousand nocturnal vicissitudes of all street-life. It took some bunch of trouble to give her cold feet. Her own life for the last few years, as she had so recently told Wilsnach, stood too checkered to leave room for such a chill. But that was the only medal, she explained, that her years of outlawry had hung on her. It had put her out of the house-pet class. Yet she was startled and upset and disturbed in soul by the sudden thought of her helplessness. They had got her head in chancery. But even more disquieting to her was the thought that they had tricked her so easily, that they had put one over on her, by a dodge that was as old as the dip-jostler's.