Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/138

 The undergraduate horde brought up the rear, quiet and expectant.

"Will you, Preston Brown, answer my question? What good will it do you to bury that thing in the woods?"

Without looking up Preston muttered: "It's a white elephant, Jere; we want to get rid of it. Don't interfere with us, 'Old Man.'"

"You can't get rid of it," said Jere with simple earnestness. "Even if you could hide it effectually," he went on, "you cannot be rid of your responsibility! Why, think, boys, was that not once a fellow human being?" ("Do you hear that, Lengthy?" one of the rear pall-bearers whispered.) "You have taken this poor body, wrenched it from the grave to which it had been entrusted by a loving wife, and little children, perhaps, and now, having had your fun out of it, you are going to drag it off to the woods, like a dead horse, bury it in the public woods, where dogs may come and scratch it up, this way!" Jere showed them with his hands how dogs scratch things up, and