Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/43

 when he fell at last, he still struggled, fighting despairingly, with the grass.

Conroy, trembling in the knees, sat down at a little distance, wiped his blubbered face and picked at his torn stockings where the kick of Don's heavy shoes had cut them and drawn blood. He looked at Don with scared eyes. "God! God!" Don screamed suddenly, and rising to his hands and knees, he began to crawl toward Conroy, in a frenzy. Conroy jumped to his feet and ran; and as he looked back over his shoulder, he saw Donald, in trying to follow him, topple and fall on his face.

He did not stop running till he came to the Park fountain. There, having washed his face and hands, he sat down shivering with guilty horror, as bewildered as a murderer, unable to make up his mind what to do. He was afraid to go home and leave Don there. He was afraid to go back and face the prospect of more fighting. He had "had enough."

It was fifteen minutes before he got himself around the bed of lilac bushes, and saw Don lying motionless where he had fallen.

"Don!" he called fearfully. "Don! What's the matter?... I didn't mean to. I didn't want to fight ... Don?" He came closer. "I'm not going to touch you. I—you hurt me as much as I did you.... Don? Get up."

Don began to moan. Conroy drew nearer. "You weren't licked," he consoled, in a shameful whisper. "You weren't licked.... I ran away."

Don sobbed: "It—it isn't that. It isn't that."