The Man Who Lived in a Shoe

by Henry James Forman

In the window was framed the abhorrent, dilapidated parody of the face of Pendleton!

It could not be! was the thought sluggishly struggling through my numbed brain. It was a nightmare.

Then a sudden sharp cry threw me into a momentary tremor. I wheeled about.

Alicia, fully dressed, with one hand to her eyes, was leaning against the doorpost!

Without speaking, I automatically bounded forward to the window. The muffled sound of heavy steps running on the turf fell upon my ears and dimly, through the starlit darkness, I caught a glimpse of the stooping bulk of a large man receding down the slope, toward the brook.

Had my senses been tricking me or had I really seen the face of Pendleton?

"Who was it?" I cried fiercely to Randolph, still hanging stupefied and immobile, with blank terror upon his features, over my desk.

He made no answer.

"Sit down over there!" I commanded sharply. As one under the influence of a drug or a hypnotic spell, the boy loosely moved to obey, but remained standing irresolute at my chair, a mass of helplessness, his head dropping limply on his chest.

Anger and pain struggling for mastery within me, I turned abruptly to Alicia.