“Who is getting away?”
“Why, that prisoner.”
“What prisoner?”
“The prisoner out there in the Square. He has escaped! He’s gone!”
“But how do you know?”
“I just saw him running down Main Street like a streak of lightning.”
My grandfather took out his silk handkerchief, passed it over his brow, and said:
“To think of anyone running on a day like this!”
And Uncle John Brand stood there and gazed at his brother with an expression of despair.
“Can’t you understand,” he said, speaking in an intense tone, as if somehow to impress my grandfather with the importance of this event in society, “can’t you understand that the prisoner out there in the Square has broken away, has escaped, and at this minute is running down Main Street, and that he’s getting farther and farther away with each moment that you sit there?”