“I didn’t care what happened then. I was crazed. An old lady in a cottage––God bless her!––fed me and gave me these clothes––her son’s castaways––and three dollars; all the money she had.
“I walked twenty miles without stop or let-up. After that I slept during the day and walked at night. Three days after my breakaway, I got on to a freight train and stole a ride as far as Sicamous. I slept overnight in a barn there. Next morning I tried to bribe a boy to get me some food at the grocery store. I gave him a dollar. He never came back. I heard some men talking at the door of the barn about a suspicious character who had been seen skulking about. That decided me. I got out when night came and slipped under an empty fruit car which was being shunted on the siding. I got off yesterday, slipping away between a little village up the line and here. The engineer got his eye on me and stopped the train. He let some men off: they were two detectives, I think. They had been riding in the caboose. They came after me. I fell exhausted somewhere in the bush. When I came to it was broad daylight and the men were gone.”
He looked up at Eileen suddenly.
“There isn’t much more. Early this morning I managed to get into a barn by the railway tracks. I got in through a skylight in the roof. I went to sleep among the straw there. Soon after, the sound of a key in the padlock outside woke me. I scrambled up and through the skylight again, and away. There were three men––one with a rifle. They hunted me, finding me and 27 losing me several times. The devil with the rifle got a line on me down the hill a short time ago.
“When I got to your door I was all in.” He smiled. “You’re a real sport. You didn’t give me away.”
He got up and threw out his hands. “Oh, what’s the good anyway! All jailbirds tell the tale and shout their innocence.”
Eileen’s heart was moved. Tears welled up in her eyes. She was at a loss to know what to do or say.
As the man turned from her, his elbow struck something hanging on the wall. He caught at it quickly as it was falling.
It was an old violin of very delicate workmanship.
“Sorry!” he exclaimed, handing it to her. “I am clumsy in a house. Haven’t been in one for so long. Glad I didn’t smash it.”