He turned toward the doorway with Bridge, calling a goodbye to the woman, but as he stepped out upon the veranda the dust of a fast-moving automobile appeared about a bend in the road a half-mile from the house.
“Too late,” he said, turning to Bridge. “Here they come!”
The woman brushed by them and peered up the road.
“Yes,” she said, “it must be them. Lordy! What'll we do?”
“I'll duck out the back way, that's what I'll do,” said Billy.
“It wouldn't do a mite of good,” said Mrs. Shorter, with a shake of her head. “They'll telephone every farmer within twenty mile of here in every direction, an' they'll get you sure. Wait! I got a scheme. Come with me,” and she turned and bustled through the little parlor, out of a doorway into something that was half hall and half storeroom. There was a flight of stairs leading to the upper story, and she waddled up them as fast as her legs would carry her, motioning the two men to follow her.
In a rear room was a trapdoor in the ceiling.
“Drag that commode under this,” she told them. “Then climb into the attic, and close the trapdoor. They won't never find you there.”
Billy pulled the ancient article of furniture beneath the opening, and in another moment the two men were in the stuffy atmosphere of the unventilated loft. Beneath them they heard Mrs. Shorter dragging the commode back to its accustomed place, and then the sound of her footsteps descending the stair.
Presently there came to them the rattling of a motor without, followed by the voices of men in the house. For an hour, half asphyxiated by the closeness of the attic, they waited, and then again they heard the sound of the running engine, diminishing as the machine drew away.