"After starting the car down to the wreck I won't let it get away from me, but catch it and set the brakes and ride it wild to the bottom."
"Why be such a fool as that?" demands Regan.
"'T is on account of promising Mr. Craney to manage the Suburban till he gets back," explains Tim.
It strikes home to Regan that this is the crisis of his life, and Tim feels his wrath as the toss of tempest. 'T would be an easy matter to kidnap the boy here an' now, and send his own agent to wreck the car, but even then the scheme is blocked. Tim must be accounted for afterward. The boy must see his passengers and tell of the accident or there will be search made for him under the wreckage, and talk in the papers, reminding the town of the Suburban's existence, and Regan's enemies that a charter is about to be forfeited.
"Hold!" says Regan to Tim at the door. "My word I'll not touch you again," and the boy drops his hands from his neck, all but wrung by a shake of the madman pacing the car. Yet his gaze lies level and clear and there is a steadiness to the bedraggled front which baffles Regan, such assurance being beyond nature in a boy.
"Whist!" he says warily, understanding somehow that nothing is to be gained here by argument or threats; "since you were fool enough to bind yourself with a promise, hold your tongue till I can find Craney."
"'T will hold," promises Tim.
Down past the terminal and out the Suburban track, bedraggled and undaunted, stalks the vagabond along the way of knowledge. Nor does he look up till coming on faithful old Charley, who has found his way back to the car and stands waiting to be hitched. Tim halts, surveying him knowingly.
"Faith, Charley, she was a wise one," he says.
From that hour he takes up the plod of duty, keening in that little minor whistle which all car drivers pick up from the wind and drumming of hoofbeats on frozen ground. And he is always on time in every weather, so that presently the lime burners relent and joke him, and Katy in pity for the outcast would pat his cheek friendlily—but never an encouragement do they receive from Tim standing at his brake and speaking sternly to Charley, meager and windbitten but unconquerable by humor or kindness as he has been by threat and danger.