“Nothing to speak of, I guess,” replied Joe, as he steadied himself and found to his infinite relief that his legs held firm under him. “A few bruises and scratches, but nothing worse. It was a close shave though. I’d have been a dead man if that pile had caught me full and square.”
The sleeve of his left arm was torn, and there was a slight cut near the shoulder from which the blood was oozing. This, however, apart from bruises, was the extent of his injuries.
“Lucky it wasn’t my pitching arm,” he remarked. “That would have been hard luck. Hello, Jim, where are you going?”
This last ejaculation was caused by Jim’s action in leaving his side and rushing round to the front of the half-built house from the scaffold of which the lumber had fallen.
Jim did not stop to make reply, but scurried as fast as he could to the street in front of the house. It was deserted, except for a solitary figure that had already covered a large part of the distance to the next corner. The man was not in overalls and did not look like a workman.
Jim hallooed to him and the man looked back. But instead of stopping he broke into a run.
In a moment Jim was after him like a hare. But the man was now near the corner, and by the speed he put on showed that he was no mean runner himself. He reached the corner just as a trolley car, going at a rapid rate, came dashing down the side street.
With a recklessness that might have cost him his life, the man made a jump for the rear platform, clutching the rail with his extended hand. The shock seemed as though it might have wrenched his arm from its socket. But he held on desperately, and finally drew himself up on the platform and entered the car.
By the time Jim reached the corner the car was a block away. Jim shouted and waved his hands, but the conductor was inside, expostulating with his passenger for the risk he had taken, and did not see or hear him.