“Good-bye Lyman!” said Amanda, laughing. “But you wouldn’t want to touch anything as low as he is.”
“I’d hate to have the chance; I’d pound him to jelly.”
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t. You’d just look at him and he’d shrivel till he’d look like a dried crabapple snitz!”
Both laughed at the girl’s words. A moment later they rose from the old log and walked down the path. When they had climbed the fence and stood in the hot, sunny road Martin said, “I guess I’ll go home and get cleaned up.” He rubbed a hand through his tumbled hair.
“And get something to eat,” she added. “By that time you’ll be ready, like Luther, to face a horde of devils.”
“Thanks to you,” he said. “I’ll never forget this half-hour just gone. Your blue bunting of hope will be singing in my heart whenever things go wrong. You said a few things to me that I couldn’t forget if I wanted to--for instance, that nothing, nobody, can hurt me, except myself. That’s something to keep in mind. I feel equal to fight now, fight for my reputation. Some kind providence must have sent you up the hill to find me.”
“Ach,” she said depreciatively, “I didn’t do a thing but steady you up a bit. I’m glad I happened to come up and see you. Go tell them if they’re hunting for a thief they’re looking in the wrong direction when they look at Martin Landis! Hurry! So you can get back before they think you’ve run away. I’ll be so anxious to hear how much the Mertzheimers have to do with this. I can see their name written all over it!”
Smiling, almost happy again, the man turned down the road to his home and Amanda went on to the Reist farmhouse. She, too, was smiling as she went. She had read between the lines of the man’s story and had seen there the moving finger writing above the name of Isabel Souders, “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”