Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/146

  along side by side, or within two or three lengths of each other.

Half a mile from the finish Pillsover began to draw ahead. He had the better horse, and when he saw that I could not overtake him he cast a look at me over his shoulder that was positively fiendish. I had to watch him whirl into Mr. Jonas Harding's yard door in a cloud of dust, a good hundred yards ahead of me. When I leaped from my buggy he had vanished through the front door. As I ran after him an old man bolted into my arms yelling, "Fire, thieves, burglars! Help! There's one of 'em in the parlor and here's another a-helling after him."

I shouted reassurances in the old man's ear, but he brushed me aside, caught up a wooden bottomed chair, and would have brained me on the spot had I not dodged through the parlor door. I had time to glimpse Pillsover in the act of yanking books from a case by the armful. Then the wooden-bottomed chair caught me in the small of the back and I sprawled headlong on top of Pillsover. As I 128]