“Hey, there!” answered Jimmie, and stopped in the light; for he did not believe that his enemy would dare pursue him there.
The voice from the car spoke again. “There's an automobile off the road a ways back here. Do you know anything about who the people are that were driving it?”
“Sure I do!” answered Jimmie promptly.
“Where are they?”
“They're up in that house—Lacey Granitch an' a lady named Helen—”
And instantly the door of the car was flung open. A man leaped out, and another man, and another; they kept coming—Jimmie would not have believed that an automobile could have held so many people. Not one of them said a word, but all started on the run for Jimmie's house as if they were charging in a battle.
IV.
Jimmie followed behind. He heard sounds of a scuffle on the lawn, and screams from inside. At first the little farm-hand could not make up his mind what to do, but finally he ran to the house; and there in the front room he saw the beautiful lady, with her wet hair streaming down her back, and the tears streaming down her face, sunk on her knees, before the man who had hailed Jimmie from the automobile. She had caught his coat with her two hands, and clung to it with such desperation that when he tried to draw away he dragged her along the floor. “Paul!” she was screaming. “What are you going to do?”
“Be quiet! Be quiet!” commanded the man. He was young, tall and superhumanly handsome; his face had the white light of a passionate resolve, his lips were set like those of a man who is marching to his death in battle. “Answer me!” cried the woman again and again; until finally he said: “I shan't kill him; but I mean to teach him his lesson.”
“Paul, Paul, have mercy!” sobbed the woman; she went on pleading hysterically, in the most dreadful distress that Jimmie had ever seen or heard. “It wasn't his fault, Paul, it was mine! I did it all! Oh, for Christ's sake! You are driving me mad!” She moaned, she implored, she sobbed till she choked herself; and when the man tried to tear her hands loose she fought with him, he could not get free of her.