ON THE OLD ROAD
When Bobby and Maggie Whaley fled from the immediate vicinity of Adam Ward's estate, they were beside themselves with fear—blind, unreasoning, instinctive fear.
There is a fear that is reasonable—that is born of an intelligent comprehension of the danger that menaces, and there is a fear that is born of ignorance—of inability to understand the nature of the danger. These children of the Flats had nothing in their little lives by which they might know the owner of the Mill, or visualize the world in which the man for whom their father worked lived. To Bobby and Maggie the home of Adam Ward was a place of mystery, as far removed from the world of their actualities as any fabled castle in fairyland could possibly be.
Sam Whaley's distorted views of all employers in the industrial world, and his fanatical ideas of class loyalty, were impressed with weird exaggeration upon the fertile minds of his children. From their father's conversation with his workmen neighbors, and from the suggestive expressions and epithets which Sam had gleaned from the literature upon which he fed his mind and which he used with such gusto, Bobby and Maggie had gathered the material out of which they had created an imaginary monster, capable of destroying them with fiendish delight. They had seen angry men too often to be much disturbed by mere human wrath. But, to them, this Adam Ward who had appeared so suddenly from the shrubbery was more than a man; he was all that they had been taught to believe—a hideous thing of more dreadful power and sinister purpose than could be imagined.
With all their strength they ran down the old hill road toward the world of the Flats where they belonged. They dared not even look over their shoulders. The very ground seemed to drag at their feet to hold them back. Then little Maggie stumbled and fell. Her frantic screams reached Bobby, who was a few feet in advance, and the boy stopped instantly and faced about, with terror in his eyes but with evident determination to defend his sister at any cost.
When he had pulled Maggie to her feet, and it was certain that there was nothing pursuing them, Bobby, boylike, laughed. "Gee, but we made some git-away, that trip! Gee, I'll tell the world!"
The little girl clung to her protector, shaking with weariness and fear. "I—can't run 'nother step," she gasped. "Will he come after us here?"
"Naw," returned the boy, with reassuring boldness, "he won't come this far. Yer just lay down in the grass, under this here tree, 'til yer catch yer wind; then we'll make it on down to the Interpreter's—'tain't far to the stairs. You just take it easy. I'll watch."
The soft grass and the cool shade were very pleasant after their wild run, and they were loath to go, even when little Maggie had recovered from her exhaustion. Very soon, when no danger appeared, the boy forgot to watch and began an animated discussion of their thrilling experience.
But Maggie did not share her brother's boastful triumph. "Do you suppose," she said, wistfully, "that he is like that to the princess lady?"