Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/378

366 struggle between the mighty outlaw and the five gendarmes who tried vainly to handcuff him. There was another when he escaped from his dungeon with a revolver and a pocket file, having first shot his guards with a blank cartridge and so startled Mickey with the explosion that he bit his tongue. Finally, there was the captain's revenge upon the villain, who had betrayed him. "'T is midnight," he hissed. "And … vengeance … is … MINE!!!" Those were the last words he spoke to Mickey, for he had been shot exactly in the heart, as was obvious from the red on his shirt bosom. He died with his face upturned to Mickey, and the curtain fell.

Mickey did not move until some one butted him in the side with an impatient knee. He was shoved along with his father in the crowd; he floated down the stairs to the chill air of the streets, still half stupid. There he stood, staring at the gutter, until his father said: "C' malon'. Goil 'ome? Uh?" Mickey looked up at the man—and accepted his responsibility. He took his father's sleeve. "Yuh 'd better get a gait on, pop," he said. "She 'll give it to yuh, if yuh don't."

They would have made a moving illustration for a temperance tract. Little Mickey trotted along, thin and eager-eyed, beside his father, who rolled in a fat stagger, mumbling to himself. They made a picture of the unhappy child of poverty leading home a brutal parent to his wretched hovel. But the parent in the riotous turmoil of his mind, was talking to Mickey as a