CHAPTER XXV.
DOWN A DARK ALLEY.
She had wondered where I was, and the soft echo of her sympathy filled my heart with a psalm. Surely she could not have suspected me of Estell's blood. But the Senator—why did he break in as if impatient of my name? Had he grown weary with hearing it? But his interruption, it was not hard to believe, was more of a sorrow than an impatience.
I was near the stable now, but I stopped the horse, almost of a mind to turn back, to touch her hand, even if compelled to run away to hide again in fear and shame. I glanced down at my mean garb, I thought of the fierce aspect of my beard-gnarled face, and pride, not fear, forced me to hesitate. "But I will go early in the morning," I mused, as I drove on, still debating, the horse slow under the restraint of my sullenness. "I will shave my face and—"
A man stepped out from the shadow into the light and raised his hand—the man who had put me in a tremor of fear. "I want to see you a moment," he said.
I was near the sidewalk, at the mouth of an alley, and without a moment of speculation as to what the fellow might mean I leaped from the cab and darted into the alley. He raised a cry and I heard another noise, a pistol shot, perhaps. I plunged through an opening and scrambled over a great pile of scrap-iron; I tore open a frail gate and came out upon a street. People were passing, but they paid but little attention to me. I crossed the street, entered another alley, made as quick time as I could, and came out near the river.
All through the night I hastened onward, sometimes on a railway track and often in the mud of the prairie. My running away might have been foolish; the man might simply have wanted to make an inquiry. And, indeed, if he had settled upon me why had he waited so long? It was easy enough to reason, but reason when slower than action is a miserable cripple. I had money enough to pay my way out West, but caution dictated a fear of open travel, so I was resolved to walk in lonely places until I felt that to trust a railway train would be less of a risk. The rain increased with the coming of daylight, and I was driven to seek the shelter of a barn. A man came out to milk the cows.
"I have invited myself in out of the rain," said I, as he gave me a suspicious look.
"All right. A man ought to have sense enough to come in out of the rain. Which way are you traveling?"