Page:Top-Notch Magazine, May 1 1915 (IA tn 1915 05 01).pdf/101

 "I can't let you go. I'm an awful coward, you know, and"

"You're nothing of the sort! I've never seen anybody as brave as you are."

A tremor ran over his body. At first she thought it was, a convulsive movement of pain, but when it continued she was overcome by the astounding conviction that he was laughing. Astonishment gave place to outraged indignation. There was no mistaking the fact that he was really shaking with laughter that he sought in vain to suppress. She leaped up, letting him drop back, and stood rigid, filled with intense resentment.

"You—you're making sport of me!" she said, in a low voice that suddenly had in it something like icy brittleness. "You've been playing on my sympathy! You're not really hurt—much. It was a very gentlemanly thing to do! I hope you have enjoyed yourself!"

He sat up without much effort. "I give you my word of honor that I didn't mean to laugh at you. Perhaps my head is affected a little. This crack on the bean must be the cause. It really was some bump."

"You—you wretch!" she cried, stamping her foot. "I hate you!"

Her little hands were tightly clenched. She turned away to hide the tears which welled again into her eyes; but now they were tears of exasperation, shame, and rage.

He got quickly to his feet. "Please, Bessie!" he said. "You don't understand. Not for the world would I"

He stopped short, staring across at the road, down which a touring car containing two men was speeding toward the village.

"Great Cæsar!" he cried. "There goes the governor! Hitchens must have got the engine running somehow. They'll expect to find me in town."

With all the strength of a good pair of lungs, he shouted, waving his hands above his head. The automobile sped on. Its occupants neither saw nor heard him.

"I guess I'm left for the time being," he said. "They'll go ripping straight through to catch that train at Albion."

"They won't rip through very far," Miss Wiggin flung at him. "There's a trap just outside the village, watched by a deputy sheriff and two constables. Your old governor will be nabbed and pulled up before my father, who will soak him with a fine. And I hope dad soaks him good," she finished, laughing, and doing so with a vindictiveness that seemed to afford her untold relief and satisfaction.

EREMIAH SMALL, constable of the town of Greenbush, sat on the top rail of the roadside fence and wedged a load of fine cut into the bowl of a burned, blackened, odorous corncob pipe, packing it down with a decidedly dirty thumb. From his perch he could look over the top of a cluster of low sumacs and keep watch upon a point on the hillside where the highway wound into view. He could also see, somewhat nearer, a tall and lonely elm tree, past which the road ran in a broadside curve.

"Weeping" Buzzell, another constable, was sitting on the ground in the shade of the sumacs, leaning against the fence, and occasionally wiping his red-rimmed and watery eyes with a faded and mussed bandanna handkerchief. His jaws worked wearily at a quid of tobacco, the presence of which was further advertised by the unmistakable stains at the corners of his doleful and flabby mouth. He had chosen his lowly position for comfort, and because his companion was far better adapted to the task of outlook.

"I tell you, 'Miah," sniffed Buzzell, "this here job is jest about played out.