"Ma! Please, Ma!"
Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner of the room.
They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could. The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when
Tobey had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run.
She looked as though she might have been carved there. Her light
breath seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.
Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his lips. "Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars, eh?"
"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"
Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the table. It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He turned toward her again.
Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.