The best of all was a letter from Jimmy, scrawled with his left hand.
“Dear Billy,” it read; “Shifty seen the fight. He says it was something fierce. He says you looked like a mad bull. He was hiding behind the fence. He says he bet on me; but he was glad he didn’t bet with nobody, because you whipped. Shifty’s doing some of my written work—I’m telling him how, of course. And I’m studying right smart. Say, Bill, I don’t lay no grudge. My arm’s getting on fine.
“Yours truly,
“Jimmy.”
Billy read the note several times. He knew that Jimmy meant much more than the words said; it was his offer of the “olive branch.” And Billy, thinking over that miserable afternoon, wondered again how it had been possible for him to feel such murderous hate for anything living. And for Jimmy! His mate at school, in play! The picture came to him of Jackson crying, of Vilette,—yes, it was not strange he had been angry. But it was not his duty to punish; even if it had been, he knew he had forgotten Jackson and Vilette, forgotten everything except the rage of the fight. Why was it? Older heads than Billy’s have asked in sorrow that same question after the madness of some angry deed has passed to leave in its wake sleepless remorse.
The best amusement of the hours of imprisonment was planning for the performance of “The Lady of the Lake.” Nothing definite, except that it was to be out of doors, had unfolded till now, when irksome leisure and May Nell’s quick mind together bore fruit.
“We can play the first canto, ‘The Chase,’ across the river in the Sunol Creek canyon,” Billy explained, eagerly.
“But there aren’t any deer,” the little girl objected. “What will you do for
‘The antlered monarch of the waste
Sprang from his heathery couch in haste’?”
“There ’re deer up there, all right; but of course we can’t get ’em. We’ll have to catch a jack rabbit beforehand and let him loose.”