“No,” agreed Dad, a shade of his elation ebbing. “She won’t. I hadn’t thought of that. That’ll be the only hard part of it all. Somehow, son, I’m such a rank old coward I’d rather face a dozen crazy men armed with knives than one terribly good woman armed with a righteous temper. But I’ll have to go through with it some way. I’ll speak to her the first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to.”
“But how—”
“Remember the night I went cat-fishing with you? Well, how do you s’pose I got out of the house? By that window just behind you. I shinned down the water-pipe. It’s dead easy. I did it. I stump you to. Right this very night. It isn’t twelve o’clock yet. You could be ten miles out of town before to-morrow morning at sunrise.”
Dad was on his feet, drawing on his clothes with the careful haste of a veteran.
“I’ll do it!” he said, feeling delightfully like a runaway schoolboy. “I’ll do it, Jimmie. Oh, lad, you’re such a little brick!”
“Don’t go off half-cocked,” adjured Jimmie. “There’s something else you’ve got to think of. What name are you going to have them call you?”
“Any name will do,” said Brinton impatiently as he bent to lace his shoes. “John Smith is as good as another, I suppose.”
“Well, you s’pose wrong,” chided Jimmie. “S’pose an off’cer or one of the men says: ‘Hey, there, Smith!’ Half the time you won’t remember you’re John Smith at all, and you won’t know enough to answer. And then everybody’ll know it isn’t your own name.”
“That’s so!” laughed Brinton. “I’ll have to teach myself my new name as I go along. That’ll be the way to get around that!”