Page:Frank Packard - The Miracle Man.djvu/307

 He stopped, and with a hurried motion carried his hands across his eyes—Helena, pure as one of God's own angels now, to come to that, to come to—

It was the Flopper who completed the sentence.

"Ten spaces up de river," said the Flopper, and shivered, and his tongue sought his lips; "or mabbe—mabbe twenty."

Pale Face Harry stirred uneasily.

"There's the other way," he said without looking up, his eyes on his finger nail that traced the grain of the wood again. "Get the money and the sparklers all done up and addressed to the ones they came from, send 'em off in a bunch to Thornton—and we fly the coop before he gets them, disappear, fade away—and take our chances of getting caught."

"An' den it's all off wid me an' Mamie"—the Flopper's face grew hard. "Nix on dat! Dat don't go!"

"We cannot do that, Harry," said Helena, in a tired voice. "There is—the Patriarch."

"Yes," said Madison, beginning his stride up and down the room again. "After all, whether we could give back the money without being caught, or whether we couldn't, is not the vital thing; there is—the Patriarch."

Helena's eyes were on the silent figure in the shadows by the fireplace.

"If if it were not for him," she said, "I think that perhaps—perhaps I might be brave enough to confess it all, and—and not try to