He sprang up, threw his sweet arms around the woman he loved, drew her close to his sirupy form, laid his bleeding cheek against her amber hair, and carried her forth to safety!
In the meantime, Skeeter Butts was lying in the reception room under a leather couch, grasping the green-plush box in his nervous hand.
He had started up-stairs to restore it to its rightful owner, just as Org and Little Bit, thinking they were poisoned, had run down the hallway above in their flight to the dining-room. Skeeter had turned his body to retreat, had lost his balance, and had fallen down the steps, taking refuge under the leather couch, where he was happy to remain during the subsequent scenes of that memorable night.
When the screams of Miss Virginia Gaitskill attracted all the guests to the rear of the house, Skeeter crawled from under the couch, crawled across the reception room, slipped out of the front door and began to crawl toward the gate.
Someone in the house turned the electric switch, causing the globe light on the front porch to flash up. Skeeter jumped, hastily concealed himself behind a bit of shrubbery, and glancing around him nervously, found himself squatting within two feet of an immense alligator.
The alligator opened his mouth like a door to the pit of the nether regions, and Skeeter, with that peculiar impulse which everyone has to strike, or throw something, at a peril, hurled the green-plush box into the alligator’s gaping mouth!
The jaws snapped together and the box containing the rabbit-foot was gone.
By that time Skeeter was gone too.
As soon as Mustard Prophet was identified, half a dozen armed men from the dinner party patroled the lawn with guns and flash-lights, hunting for the negro whom Hopey had seen. The alligator, disturbed by the flash-light, which whipped across the grass, crawled under the fence into the horse-pasture, and was there discovered and killed by Sheriff Flournoy.
Skeeter Butts, who was hiding in the bushes just across the road, drew a big sigh of relief.