Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/366

. And there it had been securely chained and imprisoned by that corporation's constable, after which solemn act he had plodded stolidly off to a belated supper, with lips pursed up in sphinx-like silence, quite satisfied with a hard day's work well done.

But as the evening had crept on certain stern fathers grew restive, and more than one anxious-eyed mother seemed paler of face than before. A boy's straw hat had been found floating on the river. Wild rumors suddenly began to creep through the town. Some one had heard loud screams, down below Ellis's Brick Yard; a capsized boat had been seen!

One by one families came out to talk it all over. Then a voice from the crowd suggested going up to Aleck Brown's for the dragging-irons, and a muffled sob or two broke involuntarily from the throat of more than one woman waiting on the little wharf.

It was just at this point that the Lone Star came puffing importantly up, and from her engine-room was first seen that strange group of disheveled and bobbing heads.

Fathers who had been meekly ruminating as to how they had misunderstood their young