"Yes; but it is no good. It seems to be in the air."
"Well, it's a dum shame. It looks as if you had somebody houndin' you out o' sheer spite. Is there anybody back behind that would do that?"
I suppose I was bat-blind; but the suggestion, even when it was added to the mysterious entanglements that were tripping me at every step, failed to open my eyes. Truly, Abel Geddis and Abner Withers had used me ruthlessly as their criminal stop-gap, but since I had paid the penalty and still bore the criminal odium, I could postulate no possible reason why they should reach out across the three-year interval to add cruel persecution to injury.
"No," I said, after a reflective pause. "There are only the two old men I have named. And now that it is all over, I can see that they were only shoving me into the breach to save themselves."
He nodded, half-doubtfully, I thought; and then: "You're goin' to try again somewheres else?"
I replied that there was nothing else to do; whereupon this white-haired old angel, who seemed so vastly out of place as the head of even a small city's police department, made an astounding proposal.
"Get your bit of dunnage—I s'pose you hain't got very much, have you?—and come around here about dark this evenin'. I'll have my buggy ready and we'll drive over to Altamont, so you can take the train there instead of here. If there's anybody follerin' you up and blacklistin' you, maybe that'll throw 'em off the track."
It was a splendid bit of kindness; and when I could swallow the lump it brought into my throat I accepted joyfully. And as the disappearance was planned, so it was carried out. In the dusk of the evening the good old man drove me the ten miles across to the neighboring village, and after thanking him out of a full heart I boarded a train and began my wanderings afresh.