Page:Steadfast Heart.djvu/124

 bed, holding his hand to reassure him of his safety.

“He won’t find me at this here school,” Angus said again and again, and Wilkins took all possible precautions to avert such a catastrophe. Angus’s going or his destination were matters entrusted to the knowledge of a trusted few.

It was early September when Lafe Fitch’s ’bus carried Wilkins and Angus to the depot. They had stopped in the shop to say good-by to Bishwhang and Jake Schwartz, but both were gone, not to be found. Browning had come with Mary Trueman—and she had kissed Angus and cried over him and whispered words in his ear which returned to comfort him many times during the years which followed.

Joylessly the pair clambered aboard the ’bus, and rattled and clattered down the street, across the iron span of the bridge, where loafers stood snaring bony fish out of the current with loops of copper wire—and thence along the dusty road, past the fair ground and the oil tanks, to the depot a half mile from town. Dave alighted first, then Angus.

In the waiting room were Bishwhang and Jake Schwartz, perspiring not from heat but from embarrassment. Their farewells were spoken gruffly, jerkily, in monosyllables.