Jim Whiting was brakeman on the local freight, a figure familiar enough to all of them.
'Getting deaf, aren’t you?' Robbins retorted.
He turned his back upon his tormentors and walked away across the platform.
He was not much impressed with the importance of his lie. Chiefly, he was elated that there had come to him a lie suitable to turn the tables. Half-way home his elation lasted, to be crowded out only by the recurring memory of the injured tramp. The boy had never before seen violent death. The picture of the man as he sped past, bloody and misshapen, on the swaying car-top; the later picture of him borne up the street on the improvised stretcher, came back upon him hideously. That for such destruction, for such wanton suffering, there should be no punishable agent, seemed intolerable. And the idea once presented, who so likely as Whiting—
He heard the beat of footsteps behind him, and Grotend, breathing quickly, swung into pace at his side.
'I been trying to catch up with you,' he explained unnecessarily. 'Say, when Jim come out on the platform, I spoke to him. I says, "One of the fellows says he saw you up on top that day the tramp got hurt." And you’d ought to seen him. I guess he knew—'
'What’d he say?' Robbins interrupted.
'All he says was, "You tell that fellow he’s a liar"; but if you’d seen the look on him—,'
'Don’t you tell him I said it,' the younger boy cautioned. 'I don’t want him down on me.' A belated stir of conscience set him to hedging. 'Anyhow, I didn’t say I saw him up on the car. All I saw was when he was just there on those iron steps on the side. I don’t know if he was going up or down.'
They stood at the Nelson gate for a little, talking. It was full dark when Robbins went up the shrub-lined path to the porch. In the lighted dining-room his mother and the younger children were already at supper.