“Listen! Can you hear me? Then listen hard! You’re dead by rights. I was killing you. I will kill you—if ever I see you again. Only one thing holds me back. It’s no pity for you. You’ve got no call to live. But people might learn about Immy if they found you dead. It would follow her all her life. But if you’ll get out of our sight forever, I’ll let you live. Go kill yourself somewhere—or run away—anywhere you please, so I never see you. For if I ever find you, by God, you’re dead! Do you hear?”
From the thing that cringed on the ground came a whine:
“Ye-yessir, thanky, sir. But where could I go, mister? I can’t think very good. Where could I go? What’d I tell Ma?”
There was a silence and Keith could feel in the tormented toss of his father’s head that it was hard for him to do the thinking for this dolt. But at last he muttered:
“Tell your mother you’re going to sea—on a whaler—anything. My God, have I got to help you to get away from me?”
Jud hung panting and slavering like a dog that had been run over by a heavy wagon and waited to be put out of its misery. RoBards spoke again at last:
“Tell your mother you’re going to New Bedford and ship before the mast.”
“Where’s New Bedford, mister? how’d a feller git there?”
“I don’t know! What difference does it make how you get there—or where you go? The thing is to get away from this country. Haven’t you brains enough to run off and save your own life? Look here, do you know the way to Poughkeepsie?”
“Yessir; yessir; I been there.”