Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/103

 might. But they had climbed that hill there in a foot of mud, and besides, two men were holding their heads.

"'Your wallet or your life!' cried my ancestor, leaning over into the wagon. The servant dropped down on his knees to reach for the wallet. David thought it was for a pistol. 'No, you don't,' said he, and let the servant have it in the side of his head, and over he flopped. With the flash of the pistol the old gentleman reached out toward David, crying 'My God!' 'Bang!' went my ancestor's other pistol. 'My son!' finished the old man, rolling out upon the roadside at his murderer's feet. You see the wind had lifted my ancestor's mask. Maybe his voice had given him away, too.

"Then off skipped the rest of the gang, down toward the swamp where the canal now runs, and so up around by Potter's woods to the college, leaving my ancestor alone to wait for morning with his dead father and with the wallet. When the dawn came in all gray and oozy, the wallet was marked, he perceived, 'For my son's graduation.'"