Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/377

Rh drawn to each other by the guilt of their conspiracy and forgetful of the nemesis that was preparing for them.

For the remainder of the evening, Mr. Flynn, between his frequent visits to the founts of comfort, sat in a blinking state of bliss, as happy as his dreams; and little Mickey also moved in another and a fairer world—a world of robber dens, of marvelous disguises, of treachery thwarted, and "the minions of the lawr" evaded and abused. It did not matter that the villain was trying to betray an outlaw who lived by robbery and escaped capture by committing murders. The outlaw had a kind heart and always addressed to the gallery sentiments that were emphatically noble. When the company filed before the curtain, Mickey hissed that villain with a venomousness that irritated even his sympathetic neighbors. "Say, kid," a man leaned over to him, "turn it off, can't yuh? Are yuh tryin' to spit a tooth?"

"'S all right," his father protested thickly. "Lell 'm 'lone." And Mickey hissed till his mouth ached.

He feasted his eyes on the mystery of the robber's cave in the woods, where the trees were painted in tints of misty blue most beautiful. He shivered in the gloom of their underground retreat in Paris, where never a door was opened except with an appalling rattle of locks and chains. He looked on the furniture in the secret office of the chief of police, and his hair stirred on his head when he recognized the fearless captain, disguised as a gendarme, entering that lion's den. There was a