The woman hastily snatched the child up into her arms, with a suppressed scream, and recoiled.
The man made no sound, but he, too, drew back a step, not seeming to see Looney's outstretched hand.
But he did see it—he saw more than that. He saw, as if they were flashed before him at lightning speed upon a cinema screen, a dozen scenes of a wild and reckless and indigent youth that he had thought was dead forever; he saw these roughneck years suddenly leap alive and stalk toward him again, toward him and his; he saw his later years of industry, his hard-won success, his position so strenuously battled for, his respectability that was become so dear to him, all his house of life so laboriously builded, crumbling before the touch of this torn and grotesque outcast that confronted and claimed him, this wavering, dusty lunatic whom he dimly remembered. If his wife knew—if her people knew—if the business men of this town were to know——
He shuddered and turned sick, and then with a sudden recovery he took his child from its mother and guided her before him into the waiting room.
Looney watched them enter, in silence. He stood dazed for a moment, and then he slowly turned and walked down the railroad track beyond the limits of the town. There, upon a spot of turf beside the right of way, he threw himself upon his face and sobbed and moaned, as a broken-hearted child sobs, as a dog moans upon its master's grave.
But after a while he looked up. Slim's star was looking down at him, red and confident and heartening as ever. He gazed at it a long time, and then an idea took form in his ruined brain and he said aloud:
“Now, dat wasn't really Slim! I been lookin' fer Slim so long I t'ink I see Slim where he ain't! Dat was jus' some guy wot looks like Slimmy. Slimmy, he wouldn't never of gone back on an old pal like dat!”
The rumble of an approaching train caught his ears. He got to his feet and prepared to board it.
“Slim, he's waitin' fer me somewheres,” he told the star. “I may be kinda looney about some t'ings, but I knows Slim, an' dey ain't no yellow streak nowheres in Slim!”
And with unshaken loyalty Looney the Mutt boarded the train and set off upon his endless quest anew.