They had gone perhaps a couple of blocks when they reached a part of the street which had no dwelling houses on it. On one side was a factory, dark and forbidding, and on the side where the young men were walking was a high board fence enclosing a coal yard.
“Wait a minute, Jim,” said Joe. “It feels as though my shoe lace had come untied.”
He stooped down to fasten the lace, and just as he did so, a jagged piece of rock came whizzing past where his head had been a second before and crashed against the fence. 106
Joe straightened up with a jerk.
“Who threw that?” he exclaimed.
Jim’s face was white at the peril his friend had so narrowly escaped.
“Somebody who knew how to throw,” he cried, “and I can make a guess at who it was. There he is now!” he shouted, as he caught sight of a dim figure slinking away in the darkness on the further side of the factory.
They darted across the street in pursuit, but when they turned the corner there was no one to be seen. Several alleys branched off from the street, up any one of which the fugitive might have made his escape. Although they tried them one after the other they could find no trace of the rascal.
Baffled and chagrined, they made their way back to the scene of the attack. Joe picked up the piece of rock and weighed it in his hand.
“About half a pound,” he judged. “And look at those rough edges! It would have been all up with me, if it had landed.”