Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/26

 leaving only the blank surface of the cobblestones with the heat trembling over them.

My grandfather put on his glasses, turned to his desk, and took up some papers there. And I waited, in the still, hot room. The minutes were ticked off by the clock. I wondered at each loud tick if it was the minute in which it would be proper for the prisoner to kick off those irons from his ankles and start to run. And then, after a few minutes, a man appeared in the doorway, and said breathlessly:

"Joe, he has escaped!"

It was Uncle John, a brother of my grandfather, one of the Brands of Kentucky, then on a visit—one of those long visits by which he and my grandfather sought to make up the large arrears of the differences, the divisions, and the separations of the great war. He was nearly of my grandfather's age, and like him a large man, with a white though longer beard. At his entrance my grandfather did not turn, nor speak, and Uncle John Brand cried again:

"Joe, he's gone, I tell you; he's getting away!"

My grandfather looked up then from his papers and said:

"John, you'd better come in out of that heat and sit down. You're excited."

"But he's getting away, I tell you! Don't you understand?"

"Who is getting away?"

"Why, that prisoner."