"That fellow I tipped over will be just about ready to fight by now. I reckon he thinks differently now about the 'white-headed kid,' as he called me. You see," Frank went on modestly, "I was something of a boxer at the Tech school, and I've had to keep my wits about me with those 'muckers' of the railroad construction gang."
"Oh, dear, me! I think there must be something very tigerish in all of us," sighed Janice. "I was glad when I saw that black-haired man go down. What did he want Hopewell's violin for?"
"Don't know. Just meanness, perhaps. They doctored Hopewell's drink somehow, and he was acting like a fool and playing ridiculously."
They could talk plainly before the storekeeper, for he really did not know what was going on. His face was blank and his eyes staring, but he had buttoned the violin beneath the breast of his coat.
"Come on, old fellow," Frank said, putting a heavy hand on Drugg's shoulder. "Let's be going. It's too wet to stand here."
The storekeeper made no objection. Indeed, as they walked along, Hopewell between Frank and Janice, who carried the umbrella, Drugg seemed to be moving in a daze. His head hung on his breast; he said no word; and his feet stumbled as though they were leaden and he had no feeling in them.
"Mr. Bowman!" exclaimed Janice, at last, and under her breath, "he is ill!"
"I am beginning to believe so myself," the civil engineer returned. "I've seen enough drunken fellows before this to know that Hopewell doesn't show many of the usual symptoms."
Janice halted suddenly. "There's a light in Mr. Massey's back room," she said.
"Eh? Back of the drugstore? Yes, I see it," Bowman said, puzzled.