Harry stepped to the pavement with a dull kind of embarrassment at the manifold scrutiny. He had misconstrued Jessica's flushing silence, and the inference stung. The fierce zest was gone, and the rankling barb of accusation smarted. He should apologize to the owner, he reflected satirically, for helping himself to the automobile—he who stole gold-dust, he at whose door the town laid its unferreted thieveries! He who was the scapegoat for the town's offenses!
That owner, in very fact, stood just then in the hotel doorway regarding him with interest. He was the sheriff of the county. He was about to step forward, when an interruption occurred. A scuffle and a weak bark sounded, and a lean brown streak shot across the pavement.
"Rummy!" cried Harry. "Rummy!"
Through some chink of the dead wall in his brain the name slipped out, a tiny atom of flotsam retrieved from the wreck of memory. That was all, but to the animal which had just found its lost master, the word meant a sublimation of delight, the clearing of the puzzle of namelessness that had perplexed its canine brain. The dog's heaven was reached!
Down on his knees on the pavement went Harry, with his arms about the starved, palpitating little creature, and his cheek against its shaggy coat. In another moment he had picked it up in his arms and was walking up the street.
Late that night Tom Felder, sitting in his office, heard the story of the runaway from the sheriff's lips. He himself had been in court at the time.
"And the horse?" he asked.
"In the Hollow, with his back broken," said the sheriff.
The lawyer sprang from his chair. "Good God!" he exclaimed. "How can a man like that ever have been a scoundrel?"
The sheriff relit his dead cigar reflectively. "It's a curious thing," he said. "They are saying on the street that he's sent Prendergast packing. He'll have to watch out—the old tarantula will sting him if he can!"