Yes, I'll go on.
I stood it all right for a time, out there alone in the night. But I never was one to wait patiently. I can't wait—it isn't in me. But there I had to stand and just—God!—just wait.
If I hadn't waited so hard at the very first I wouldn't 'a' given out so soon. But I stood so still and listened so terribly hard that the trees began to whisper and the bushes to crack and creep. I heard things in my head and ears that weren't sounding anywhere else. And all of a sudden—tramp, tramp, tramp—I heard the cop's footsteps.
He stopped over there by the swinging electric light above the gate. I crouched down behind the iron bench.
And my coat caught a twig on a bush and its crack—ck was like a yell.
I thought I'd die. I thought I'd scream. I thought I'd run. I thought I'd faint. But I didn't—for there, asleep on a rug that some one had forgotten to take in, was the house cat. I gave her a quick slap, and she flew out and across the path like a flash.
The cop watched her, his hand on the gate, and passed on.
Mag Monahan, if Tom had come out that minute without a bean and gone home with me, I'd been so relieved I'd never have tried again. But he didn't come. Nothing happened. Nights and nights and nights went by, and the stillness began to sound again. My throat went choking mad. I began to shiver, and I reached for the rug the cat had lain on.
Funny, how some things strike you! This was Latimer's rug. I had noticed it that evening—a warm, soft, mottled green that looked like silk and fur mixed. I could see the way his long, white hands looked on it, and as I touched it I could hear his voice—
Oh, Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the Snake:
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blacken'd—Man's forgiveness give—and take!